Notes from the Edge May 20th 2024

Good afternoon. I have to leave to take care of some things and so I thought I would do this blog beforehand, so it gets out. I have been working late and my wife as well, so we watch programs or listen to programs and glance at the screen occasionally while we work. If the story is good the work doesn’t get done so we stopped doing it that way and began actually taking time at night to watch TV together, you know like normal people do.

Last week we finished up You on Netflix, at least until the next and final season rolls out and we began watching Under the Bridge on Hulu. Both compelling shows. I’ve seen reviews that liken You to Dexter. Maybe in a very generic sort of way. But not much. You is about a man named Joe who is a stalker who gets obsessed with the women he stalks, falls in love and then the first time they show they do not feel the same he decides he has to kill them. That is the plot loosely. Recommended if you like dark thrillers.

Under the Bridge is about a young girl who is murdered by another young girl, part of her peer group and a gang of their own. Dark thriller also. A reporter comes to town to write a story and becomes personally involved because she has her own past to uncover, and she is from that same town as well. I don’t think I spoiled anything in either explanation. They are both worth watching if you are into the dark side of psychological thrillers.

I left you a free short story from the short story collection Crime Time. I hope you enjoy it and I will be back tomorrow, Dell…

CRIME TIME

Dell Sweet 2017 all rights reserved
foreign and domestic.

 

LEGAL

This is a
work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are
products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual living person’s
places, situations or events is purely coincidental.

Portions of
this novel are Copyright © 2010 – 2015 Dell Sweet. No part of this book may be
reproduced by any means, electronic, print, scanner or any other means and or
distributed without the author’s permission.

Permission
is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or
electronic print.

Crime Time: Nine short stories from Author Dell Sweet…

PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS

Nine Fifty-Nine A.M.

I lowered my
wrist to my side, settled myself back into the shadows of the treeline and
raised my binoculars to my eyes.

I swept the
back deck and rear entrance, shot across the fence to the next house in line:
Nothing; and nothing. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I had been wrong all along.

Being a
private detective isn’t all thrills. Most of the time it’s doing exactly what I
was doing: Sitting and waiting. For hours sometimes, with little to show. Other
times you just happen to walk into the middle of something, get everything you
need in those few seconds and feel a little guilty about even charging for it,
let alone keeping the retainer: If there was a retainer… But of course I
always fight past that. After all money, making a living, is why I do this job.

Apparently
this job wasn’t going to be one of those kinds of jobs, but what kind of job
was it going to be? Hard to tell.

I was
watching the house of Paul and Melinda Fields. At Melinda Field’s request. She
was a friend of my wife Joan. So you would think that the request would have
come from my wife to help her friend, but it had not. It had not come that way
at all. It had come instead in the form of a phone call to my office. Melinda
had called and asked me to meet with her, and she asked me to keep it quiet.
She didn’t want her friends to know, meaning my wife too, I concluded.

I was okay
with that. You get a lot of that sort of thing as a private eye. People think
odd things, maybe they’re even a little paranoid. If a woman or a man thinks
his or her loved one is cheating on them they sometimes want to keep the
information as quiet as possible. They want to know. You’re the private dick so
it’s okay if you know, but they don’t want anyone else to know.

This was day
two and I was about to burn up the retainer. I had nothing at all to show for
it. But as I said that is the private detective game most of the time. Waiting
and seeing. I simply hadn’t seen anything. Well, almost nothing. Apparently
Paul did keep things from his wife. Right now, for instance, he was supposed to
be at his office. He wasn’t of course. Joan had left for work, but he hadn’t.
And more than once he had checked the windows as though he were expecting
someone. Peeking out of the drapes; sliding the deck door open and peeking out
before he stepped outside… Sipping his coffee as he looked around and then
quickly stepping back inside. Odd.

Odd, but not
exactly indicative of much of anything at all. He had done nearly the same
thing yesterday and I had wasted nearly four hours watching him pace the deck,
check the windows, pace the kitchen, refill his cup, pace the deck some more,
and then finally get in his car and drive to the office in the early afternoon.

Paul Fields
was a contractor. Not one of the big ones, but not one of the small ones
either. They lived in a nice subdivision. Melinda sold real estate. Between the
two of them they did very well. She drove a nice BMW and he drove a new Ford
pickup. One of the big ones with the big price tags. It looked as though it had
never hauled anything in its life. All shiny black and chrome. Lots of chrome.

The man
lived in Jeans, work boots and button up chambray work shirts. He was in his
early forties, looked thirty five. Fit, attractive in some ways. I could see
why she might think he was  screwing around. I just didn’t see any
evidence of it if he was. Maybe, I thought, I should have run it past Joan.
Maybe she felt this same thing a few times a year, once a month: Who knew. The
only thing that had stopped me was that Melinda had made it a condition of
hiring me. And so I hadn’t.

I lowered
the glasses, slipped a cigarette from my pack and lit it, and then settled back
to smoke as I watched. I know, they’ll kill me, but isn’t life killing us all
every day? I know, I know, excuses. I got a ton of them.

I took a
deep drag and blew the smoke out my nose. I glanced at my watch. Another hour
and that would be it.

It was about
then that things got interesting. Paul had, had the drapes open on the rear
sliders. They suddenly swept shut. My first thought was that he was about to
leave for the office, but out of the corner of my eye I caught a taxi drift up
to the curbing a couple houses down and stop. It sat idling for a few moments
and then the back door popped open, a woman stepped out and hurried off down
the walk toward Paul’s house.

I got the
camera up and snapped a few dozen pictures before she was out of my line of
sight, but who knew what they might be worth? She was moving fast and her face
was not fully turned toward the camera. She had one hand up, brushing at her
hair as she walked. I changed the card and slipped the other into my pocket. I
hated to be short when I needed to shoot.

There was a
gap in the drapes. I couldn’t see much through the shadows as I focused with my
binoculars. The digital camera didn’t offer much better on zoom, but I clicked
a few shots off anyway. Many times I had found the money shot in the pictures I
didn’t think would be worth anything at all. I then began to scan the second
floor bedroom drapes for movement. There was a set of sliders there too that
opened onto an upper deck.

A little
movement caught my eye so I kept the lens focused there. Something or someone
brushed up against the drapes, they stuttered open for a brief instant and I
clicked off another dozen shots out of habit. You just never knew where the
money shot was going to be, or if there was even going to be one, but if you
didn’t shoot you couldn’t get anything.

I put in
another hour, but there was nothing much to see. I had just about made up my
mind to shift my cover to the front of the house just in case she slipped out
earlier than I thought she would, when a taxi rolled up to the curb of the
house next door, and then coasted to a stop, presumably, out of my line of site
in front of Paul’s house. I cursed under my breath. Piss poor planning on my
part. No other way to see it. I could have gotten a clear shot of the woman,
whoever she was.

All in all
it made no difference though. The retainer was shot, and most people never went
past the retainer. He was fooling around with someone, most likely, and maybe
one of the shots I took would even be enough for Melinda to recognize who the
woman was. If proof was all she was after she had that.

I retreated
back into the woods and made my way to a dead end service road where I had
parked earlier, tossed my gear onto the front seat of the beat up old Dodge I
used for surveillance, and followed it in. A half a day shot. I had another
case to look into, a simple straight forward process serve. I had some good
information on where the person should be, hopefully she would be. Maybe it
could be a slam dunk kind of day. Well, except for missing the exit shot. I
cursed once more under my breath as I keyed the old Dodge and headed back into
town.

Nine Twenty-Seven P.M.

I shifted
into park, dropped the keys into my coat pocket and levered open my door. At
the last moment I turned and retrieved my binoculars, camera, and the small
.380 I usually carried when I was somewhere where unexpected things might
happen.

The process
serve had been a bust, I was tired and grouchy. I palmed the small gun in one
hand: I had found myself in the woods more than once on surveillance jobs. Bad
neighborhoods a few times too. The .380 was small in my hand, but a large
comfort in my head.

I had started
with the gun after a friend of mine who worked for the PD and moonlighted as a
private eye, small stuff, mostly process serving, had been ambushed by an angry
husband he had been trying to serve divorce papers on. He’d been shot four
times and had barely survived the hurried ambulance trip to the hospital
emergency room. The PD career was done, and the private eye stuff too, although
a few of us threw him a bone when we could: When he was sober. I decided I’d
rather have something to show.

I had nearly
bought a .44 caliber, but one test fire had convinced me to leave that for
something smaller and hopefully non fatal. I know, I shouldn’t really be
concerned with that. After all, if I am going to have to use a gun to defend
myself it should be capable of laying someone down. I just haven’t been able to
believe in it yet. I have flashed the .380 twice and ended violent
confrontations right there. My ex-PD friends say don’t pull it unless you mean
to use it… Maybe… Someday.

I dropped
the camera and the gun into my other coat pocket, wound the binocular strap
around my hand and walked around the back to where my office is. Joan and I
have a deal. I don’t track whatever I have been walking through all day into
the house and she won’t divorce me. She was that passionate about it. I emptied
my pockets, slipped off my boots I used for the woods, which did, I noticed,
have something that could have been mud, bear shit or even dog shit that I
could have picked up crossing my own back yard, on them: Joan’s poodle, Mister
Tibbles. We’ve agreed to hate each other. I thought about a sniff test, decided
to pass, I never could distinguish poodle shit from bear shit anyway, slid on
my slippers and walked the shoes to the back door.

Joan called
down from the upper level, probably the kitchen. More specifically the bar that
was just off the kitchen. My office was on the lower level. You could translate
that as basement and you would be correct. I would only add converted basement.

“Yeah…
It’s me,” I called back.

“Be careful
in the backyard. I took Mister Tibbles out and I couldn’t see where he went.”

That
answered that question. “Uh huh,” I answered.

Nothing else
floated down to me. I left the landing and walked down to my office. I
transferred the pictures off the two cards, then opened my image program as I
dialed Melinda’s number. She picked up on the first ring. Her voice low, sexy.
It said, “Please buy this property from
me, baby.” Sexist, yes, I know. I try not to be. And I felt even worse
about being one because of the bad news I was about to give her.

“Mike,” I
said.

“Oh…
Mike.” She sounded surprised.

I ignored it
as I loaded the pictures and searched through them one by one. “Melinda, I have
some bad news…. I’ll send you a report on this, but I thought I should call
and talk to you just the same… Instead of you reading it in a report.” I
searched through the thumbnails as they came up. “I have a few things left to
do, but essentially… You were right, Melinda… There’s no easy way to put
it, your husband, Paul, is seeing someone.”

I continued
flicking through the thumbnails and selected two that might be useful. One shot
through the upstairs drapes showed a woman. I ascertained that from the dress
she wore. Her face however was turned away from the camera, a blurry blob in
shadow.

The second
photo showed her hurrying from the cab. Part of her face was obscured by one
hand. I would work on both photos and try to get something that Melinda could
identify. Melinda stayed silent on the phone.

“I don’t
know who the woman is,” I admitted. “She outfoxed me and that doesn’t usually
happen. Maybe she was being careful or maybe she’s a little paranoid… I…”

“I know who
she is, Mike.”

I stopped.
“You do?”

“Yes… I…
I had hoped you would identify her though… I wanted to be absolutely sure.”
She said sure, but she sounded very unsure.

I
transferred the two pictures to some other software, started with the first one
from the bedroom shot through the drapes, and selected the areas to work on.

“Mike,”
Melinda said even more softly.

“I’m looking
over a few photos I shot right now. Trying to get a good, clear face shot,” I
told her. She sounded on the verge of tears. Like she was unraveling over the
phone. It made me wish I hadn’t addressed it over the phone at all.

The face
became clearer pixel by pixel. I have a good machine, it didn’t take long, and
I didn’t have to bother with the other photo. “The picture’s coming up,
Melinda,” I told her, but my words clogged in my throat as the picture finally
came up, and I fell silent myself. She spoke into my silence.

“Mike… I
would have told you, Mike… Mike?” She sounded panicked.

“What?” I
managed.

“I wasn’t
sure… Not completely, Mike.”

“But you
hired me to find out? Me? Why didn’t you hire someone else?” A hard ball had
settled into the pit of my stomach.

“I… I
don’t know… I thought… I thought… I thought you would want to know…
Mike… Mike I didn’t really think it through. I was angry… Upset… I wasn’t
thinking straight, Mike. I wasn’t.” Now it was her turn to fall silent. I could
just barely hear her breathing over the phone in the hardness of the silence.

“I’ll send
the retainer back, “ I said at last into the silence. “You… You know maybe
this was best… I don’t guess I would have wanted one of my friends to be the
guy on this… Finding out. It’s just a little hard to think right now.”

“Sure it
is,” She agreed. “I’m so upset.” She sobbed once as if trying to choke it back
and then the soft sound of her crying came over the phone.

I was not at
the point of tears. I was at the point of anger. That hard place where it’s
brand new and you can’t seem to swallow it down. I was there, at that place.
It’s a hard goddamn place to be and I realized she had been there too, maybe
still was. It was also a dangerous place to be.

“I have to
get the hell out of here,” I told her. Twice I had found my eyes locked on the
.380 where I had set it on the desktop what seemed like a million years ago.

“Me too…
It makes me sick to know it for a fact.” She was still crying, but trying to
get herself under control.

It was spur
of the moment, but my mouth opened and with no artifice the words tumbled
forth.

“I have a
cabin… It’s nearly the weekend…
Up in Maine… It’s a drive… Isolated… A good place to think.” Silence from
the phone. “If you wanted to… Oh hell.”

She laughed
a small laugh, followed by sniffles and a few seconds of silence. “I’ll meet
you somewhere?” She asked.

“Airport? …
You could leave your car in the long term lot… Pick it up Monday or so…”

“Let me get
some things together…” She went back to crying for a few moments. “I’ll
just… Just leave him a note.” She laughed again, sharply this time. “You know
what, I won’t… I’ll be there in… An hour? An hour, Mike?”

I nodded and
then realized she couldn’t see that. And so, I told her I would meet her there
in an hour. I clicked off, slid the phone into my pocket and just sat there for
a moment. My eyes dropped back down to the gun, and it seemed to hold me
hypnotized for a length of time. Like a spell I had to break. I forced myself
to look away. I got up and walked away from it. I went up to our bedroom and
filled an old suitcase.

I half
expected Joan to walk in, see what I was doing and stop me, but she didn’t. I
expected her to say something when I came back down the stairs and crossed
through the kitchen to the back door, but again she didn’t. If she was sitting
there in the gloom of the bar area or had migrated farther into the shadows of
the living room, I couldn’t say. She said nothing. Mister Tibbles growled
lightly and that was it.

I moved the
car, backed my Jeep out of the garage and out into the street. A few minutes
later I was cruising the interstate through the darkness, heading for the
airport.

If you enjoyed it consider getting the book at Amazon.

Crime Time

Crime Time is a collection of nine crime stories from author
Dell Sweet. From short stories to near novel length… #Crime #Fiction
#DellSweet #Kindle #Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H7SB8PD

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