The Swiped Shades
by D. L. Wells
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
To Liz Finnegan, for giving me the idea.
part 1
I
Have you ever uncovered a secret and immediately wished you hadn’t?
I suppose it all depends. Secrets can vary in their level of impact and importance.
Say you have a friend with depression, and this friend has a wife. Well, one day, you stop by your friend’s house to have a couple of drinks and watch TV. The door’s ajar, and you knock, but no one replies. You start to become worried, and you open the door and walk inside. You don’t see your friend, but you see his wife riding someone that definitely isn’t him.
Now, what are you going to do? Are you going to tell your depressed friend the truth of what you saw and risk him attempting suicide? Or do you keep it a secret from him? He won’t know the truth, but he will still be happy with his cheating wife while you’re busy fighting yourself over whether you should tell him or not.
Well, my situation isn’t like that and, actually, I would prefer that scenario to my own. But one thing’s for certain: secrets are a bitch.
It all started a couple days ago. I was in my office, drinking coffee laced with whiskey as I read the newspaper, The Beaufort Gazette, which is what I normally do when I hit a drought of clients. Oh, who am I kidding? It was mostly whiskey.
My office showed how my business was doing, unfortunately: the carpet underneath my feet was stained in several spots; I never got enough money to pay for carpet cleaners. And the paint that coated the brick walls was coming off, showing the cracks underneath. Needless to say, the ambience of my little headquarters was somewhat lacking. However, people don’t come here for the ambience; they come here to get their problems sorted out by a professional. And if I’m anything at all, I’m a professional... Well, at least I like to think I am.
Honestly, I was actually about to leave when someone rang the doorbell. Never close up shop when you have one more customer on the outside; it’s bad for business. “It’s open,” I answered, as I quickly put the bottle of whiskey in the open desk drawer. Clients don’t really like it when they find that a person they’re hiring drinks, though they won’t necessarily admit it.
Then the door opened and a red-haired woman wearing a green parka and sunglasses entered my office. She walked up to me, silently, and sat down in the chair in front of my desk. She didn’t take off her sunglasses, and she kept her parka on, so she must have thought that her business here wouldn’t have been too long. “Hello, Mr. Hamilton,” she said, moving her lips into the form of a smile; unfortunately, I couldn’t tell whether or not it was forced.
“Please, call me Thomas,” I implored, giving her the smile I had practiced for a good two years. In a way, I thought it kind of odd that she didn’t ask how I was doing, but all that usually means is that the client isn’t in the mood for pleasantries. “What can I do for you?”
“An item of mine has been stolen, and I want you to find it for me.” Her face was straight and her words emotionless.
The only thing I couldn’t even try to read were her eyes, because, you know, the sunglasses. For some reason, I was beginning to think that she never intended to take them off.
“Okay,” I said, pulling out my notebook and pen. “And what item was that?”
“My sunglasses,” she answered seriously. Very seriously.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Um, aren’t you already wearing sunglasses?”
She nodded.
“So, why do you need me to find your stolen ones?” I didn’t see the point in trying to find something that she already had, but, hey, who am I to judge.
She smirked. “The ones that were stolen are incredibly precious to me.” Her words still remained impersonal. “I need them badly.”
“Why don’t you just find the brand of your stolen ones and buy another pair?”
“My stolen ones can’t be bought anywhere, and I would greatly appreciate it if you were to find them.” She smiled.
“What? Were they given to you by someone special? A friend? Family, perhaps?” I sat back in my chair and took a big swallow of my coffee as she remained silent. If she wasn’t going to give any details, then I couldn’t do the job. “Look, lady, I would like to help you, but I—”
“You what?” she interrupted, sounding a little irritable “To go back to your little home, and waste some time? Or to just keep lounging on your chair, reading the newspaper while you drink your coffee?” She looked down at the mug.
I looked at her stunned, slightly perplexed. “How... How did you—”
“I don’t have the time to explain, Mr. Hamilton,” she interrupted; not as irritable as before, though she still seemed somewhat bothered. “Look, are you going to take the job or not?” There was a bit of a pause. “I’ll give you ten thousand dollars.”
The cup practically fell out of my hand but, luckily, it was just hovering over the desk when I dropped it. The bottom of the mug hit the desk but didn’t spill any of the contents onto the hardwood. I looked at her as if she was the craziest woman I’ve ever seen, but, for me, she was crazy in the good way: the ten thousand-dollar way.
“Ten thousand?” I asked with much uncertainty; she nodded, but that did little to convince me. “All right, what do they look like?” I held my pen more closely to the notebook. The job didn’t seem worth it before, but ten thousand dollars has a way of swaying people’s minds, especially mine.
“You’ll know them when you see them,” she said, in her same impersonal tone. That didn’t really give me much, and I suspected that she was deliberately trying to give me as much information as she thought I needed, which wasn’t much from my perspective.
I smirked, I couldn’t help myself; there was something about noncompliance that put a smile on my face. “How were they stolen?” I questioned, not wanting to press too much. She might lower the payment, and I couldn’t have that.
She went silent for a moment, as if contemplating whether or not to tell me, which generally isn’t a good sign. “One night, I put my glasses on the counter next to my bed in a hotel room before I went to sleep. They were gone when I woke up the next morning.”
I sighed as I put the pen on the desk, and I took a minute to choose my words carefully. I thought that if I messed that up, she might leave because of my insolence. “You know, there’s the possibility that you might’ve misplaced them,” I suggested, as politely as I could. Her story seemed, to me, a bit less like a burglary, and leaned more towards the possibility, and the strong probability, that she had forgotten where she put them.
“No. They were stolen,” she insisted. The woman clearly had her mind made up, and nothing I could say would convince her otherwise. Sometimes, that can be a good thing. This was not one of those times.
“Any suspects?” I asked, trying to find the one thing I could check up on.
“No.”
I looked at her as if she was crazy, and I got the feeling that she could tell. “Okay, so what is it you want me to do exactly?” So far, I wasn’t seeing how this was worth it.
“I want you to find my sunglasses,” she repeated.
“How exactly am I supposed to do that?” I didn’t get the idea that she was paying me ten thousand to sit on my ass, though that would be a very easy task that I would be more than willing to do.
“To investigate,” she answered, as if the answer was obvious all along. “Isn’t that what you people do?” she inquired rather offensively.
“Yes, yes it is,” I told her, trying to avoid acknowledging the insult. “But, I need to know where to investigate, whom to investigate, to be of any assistance.” I put in a lot of effort to make sure that I didn’t sound patronizing.
She paused for a moment and then looked back to me. “Go to the Best Western on Bay Street, room 47. That’s the room I slept in, and that’s the room my sunglasses were taken from.” The woman got up from the seat and began to walk toward the door, she clearly didn’t want to warm the seat in my place a minute more.
“Wait,” I called out, as she put her hand on the door knob. “What am I supposed to call you? How am I supposed to notify you when I have your glasses?” I suspected that she never intended to give me that information.
“Vanessa,” she said without looking back. “And don’t fret, I’ll know when you have them.” And with that, she left my office.
I knew that I should’ve rejected the job, but I needed the money. More than that, I needed the chance actually to do something for once. After a while, I was starting to feel cramped in my office, the more I sat there. But the thing is, all of that’s in hindsight, and there’s only one problem with hindsight: it’s a bitch, and big one at that.
* * *
Finding the hotel was easy; there was only one Best Western on Bay Street in Port Royal, one of the few good hotels in Beaufort, South Carolina. But I knew that finding the place wasn’t going to be the hard part: finding Vanessa’s sunglasses, with the little information that she provided, was the hard part. I had definitely had better jobs — with more information given — than this, that’s for sure.
Immediately, I found out that the hotel was packed, mainly with people who looked like they were on business, mixed with others that appeared to be tourists. In the center of the room were four chairs aligned in the shape of a square, with a glass coffee table in the middle. There was a group sitting on the chairs and they were speaking to one another, though how they could hear each other, with all the noise, was beyond me.
I had thought that this would be a more relaxing place: the lobby was dimly lit with soft, ambient lights, the walls were painted a nice brown, and several potted flowers lay atop a few of the maple tables scattered around the lobby. There were also a few scented candles — I think I detected the scent of lavender — and soft-jazz music playing, though it could barely be heard over the crowd. Sadly, none of these things could be enjoyed; all the people crowding the lobby made it hard to take in the ambience. It only made me question the point of it.
But I had the feeling that the ambience wasn’t the only thing that was ruined by the swarms of people. There was a good chance that room 47 was already taken. And if the room was indeed occupied as I imagined it would be, I doubted that the occupants would be so kind as to let me wander about looking for any clue that might or might not be there. I pushed my way through the crowd to speak with the employee behind the counter.
The employee had just finished giving a room to a family in front of me when I got there, but it wasn’t room 47; I had that in my favor. When the family moved away from the desk, I walked up to the counter, which gleamed from a recent polish. “Hello, sir, what can I help you with?” the employee asked with a smile.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Ma’am, but I’m a private detective.” I took out my wallet and showed her my license. “I’m on the job, you see.”
The employee nodded in recognition, but her face appeared somewhat uncertain.
“My client had an item of hers stolen last night. Well, she thinks it was stolen, but I think she just misplaced it. I would like to rent a room, somewhere I could stay while I look for it. Oh, and I hope it’s not too much trouble for me to look in your lost-and-found; maybe she dropped it, and someone gave it to another employee.” I tried to sound a bit apologetic, but it wasn’t genuine, and I wasn’t sure how well it came across.
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all, sir,” she reassured, clicking something on the desktop that I couldn’t see. She put her hands on the keyboard and looked up at me. “Now, hold on for a moment, so I can get you a room.” she said, her hands on the keyboard.
“Well there is a room I would like, if it’s possible. I’ve been in that room most of the times I’ve come here. I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Okay, sir, let me see if it’s available.” She clicked on something that I couldn’t see and put her hands back on the keyboard. “Now, what room is it, sir?”
“Room 47,” I answered, feeling hopeful that things would turn out my way.
The employee didn’t type it in; she didn’t even look down at the desktop. She only looked me right in my eyes, as if I had just said the most forbidden thing imaginable and the penalty for uttering it was most severe. “I’m sorry, sir, but that room isn’t available,” she answered stiffly, perhaps bitterly. To me, she appeared to have a slight hostility that was masked not too well, just enough to make me question what was going on.
“Is it taken?” I asked. I strongly suspected that it wasn’t taken, and that something was about to go terribly wrong.
“No.”
“So, what’s the problem?” I pressed.
“Sir, I already told you that it’s not available,” she said more grimly than before. I was beginning to think I was trying her patience. “Now I would like you to either rent another room, or leave. If you do neither, I will be forced to call security.” She was dead serious, and I didn’t feel like calling out her bluff.
“Okay, I’ll rent another room.”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have any,” she proclaimed, flashing me a spiteful smile.
* * *
Copyright © 2018 by D. L. Wells
