Heir Apparent by James Terry

Author:James Terry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2019-01-25T05:00:00+00:00

17

MONDAY MORNING’S MAIL was full of surprises. The first was a letter from Mrs. Fletcher, postmarked a week ago at the Spring Valley PO. It was a masterpiece of concision: “King, Ditch the coat and hat. Heidi Fletcher.” I was starting to like her. Her husband was next in the queue: an envelope containing a Fletcher Enterprises check for $150 for my week of service to him. The check was not accompanied by a letter of apology. Finally, a letter from the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services notifying me that my detective’s license had expired thirty days ago and was now delinquent. I had mailed in the renewal form months ago. Just to be sure, I searched through a stack of papers on the filing cabinet, and there it was.

I checked my messages. Three from Mom: the first checking to make sure I had made it home all right, the second to make sure I had got the first, the third a follow-up to the second. Also one from Gordon Fletcher, asking when I would be in my office. He wanted to have a word with me.

After a few minutes of quiet meditation, I took my right earlobe between my thumb and middle finger and massaged it in a circular motion. I read the notes I had taken on the Fletcher case then tore the pages from the pad and wadded them up and chucked them into the garbage can. On second thought I retrieved them and ripped them up and returned them to the can.

It was unusually quiet in the building. Normally by this time of morning a veritable flamenco of high heels is clattering away above and below, accompanied by ringing telephones, mysterious hammering sounds, the murmur of male voices. Easter Monday, I surmised as I picked up the piece of Silly Putty and looked again at the shoe, the trouser cuff, the dim suggestion of a ventilation grate. I took my magnifying glass from the middle desk drawer and studied the image more closely. Part of the nostalgia it exuded, apart from the smell and texture of the putty itself, may have been due to the fact that the shoe and the trouser cuff seemed to belong to the 1970s: a bulbous toe and platform heel, flaring cuff. The text read like bad modern poetry:

time. They rely on several privat

a vital link between the agency

f which is Ruth Brenner. A sin

“a difference in people’s liv

fact that she herself gre

t. Jerome’s, bu

I studied it for a while, trying to convince myself that there was a deeper meaning to it, then I set it back on the desk and got up and went to the window. The blinds were down, the blades tilted open. Beneath the uppermost layer of dust, a cake of dark grime had taken root. It took some scraping with my fingernail to get through to the aluminum. There the mold spores had created tiny starbursts of rust where they had eaten through the coating.

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