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The Furniture Warehouse – Pt II

16 Monday May 2022

Posted by webbywriter1 in Crime - Fioction, Fiction, Uncategorized

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I shook my head. I must be hungrier than I thought.

Cutting it off with Debbi, I made my way to the lunch room. There was going to be an after-hours work party at the pizza place. I was really thinking about the party and anyone interesting I might meet.

The school term finally lurched to an end. We were all exhausted with finals and term projects.

One day Debbi told me “I knocked over a lamp in the living room and haven’t had time to pick it up.”

In some weird way, that made total sense. Our little group babbled endlessly either about school or the current boyfriends.  

However, life chugged on at the Megastore. I got to work a bit late the next Saturday and people were milling around in clumps, whispering. Debbi and another State girl were huddled together. I had to immediately invite myself into the conversation. They talked in low voices.

“I can’t believe it!” Janet, a short, somewhat chubby, English major was saying. “I was just working with her!”

“I know, I know,” Debbi was saying with a brilliant gleam in her eye. “Isn’t it something!”

“What, what?” I was practically jumping up and down at this point. What was going on?

“It’s Sharlene,” Janet almost whispered.

“What?” I said too loudly and two of the day girls turned and stared at me, then turned away.

“She got arrested!” Debbi blurted out.

“Arrested!” I was stunned. My mouth formed an O shape.

“Handcuffs and everything,” Janet chimed in. “The police were just here and they took her away.”

My head was reeling. “For what?” I got out.

“Stealing,” said Debbi smugly. My mouth dropped.

“It’s like this,” explained Janet. She did a small finger point to the corner where the payment book and the box had been. They weren’t there.  “She was taking the payments from the customers and giving them a receipt for their money, but then taking maybe $5.00 from the payment and putting it in her pocket.”

“But the book had two copies,” I said. “How could she change the bottom copy?”

Debbi glanced around then leaned forward, proud of herself, “She found a way to cover the bottom copy when she was writing and then changed the bottom amount to what was in the box.”

“So how did they find out?” I was dumbfounded.

“Well,” Debbi was having more fun than a barrel of exploding snaps, “these people kept coming in and complaining that their statement in the mail didn’t match how much they had paid in the store.  When one or two people said it, Marge thought they were just trying to pull a fast one, but then so many came in, she began to suspect something.”

“Yeah,” said Janet in a very hushed voice, “that’s when she started watching all of us.” My stomach got queasy.

“They finally figured out it was Sharlene but they could never really seeing her doing it. So, they had to wait until they saw her do it two or three times and then they could get her.”

“Yeah,” Debbi had to add, “Marge wants to eat Norma’s head.”

“Why?” I said incredulous.

“Because Norma didn’t notice the difference in the inks on the paper,” whispered Janet.

“Wow,” was all I could say. “How much do you think she got?” Janet put her hands up and shrugged with a question mark face. We finally all decided we should at least look busy and drifted back to work.

We never saw Sharlene after that day. And, Megalopolis Furniture Store did not specialize in any form of employee rehab. Debbi, Janet and Mark, the accounting guy, and I all graduated from State that year. I stayed with Megalopolis a few more months after graduation, just long enough to get a transfer to San Diego and find a full-time job.

We all went on with our separate lives. Still, from time to time I think about Sharlene and my own decision to just think about this green stuff as ‘paper.’

The End

Tracker Part II

21 Thursday Apr 2022

Posted by webbywriter1 in Crime - Fioction, Fiction, Uncategorized

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“Hum,” she thought to herself musing. She rummaged through her purse, ah, there they were. She had some coupons in her envelope that were about to expire, she needed to get over to the store pick up those items while they were still good. She sped off full of her next mission.

The trip to Belize had gone as planned.  It was an AAA group tour and they stayed at a little discount hotel that was not as close to the beach as she would have liked, but oh well. She spent a lot of time by the pool there and sipped exactly one Mai-Tai each evening watching the sun go down. She had time to catch up on her reading and actually had some fun eating dinner with other Americans. Of course, many of them were definitely approaching their golden years at a running gallop, but she didn’t mind, made her feel younger.

There had just been one problem on her trip. Denise was in the habit of carrying her id and money in a little over-the-shoulder bag. One evening toward the end of her trip, she had draped it over the back of her chair and forgot it. She had gotten involved speaking to an interesting older married couple and had left with them. No more than a half hour later, she realized what she had done and rushed back to the table, too late. The bag was gone. She raised hell with the kitchen staff and the manager and although they assured her they would do a ‘complete investigation’ nothing ever came of it and the bag disappeared.

Fortunately for Denise, ever mindful, she had another expired passport with her in her luggage. She was able to get back into the states with that and a photocopy of the lost passport. She had to answer a lot of questions and then immediately apply for another once she was home; but she was home safe and sound in her little condo.

She really hated when things didn’t go according to plan, but some days….  When she went to pickup her new passport she asked the girl “What if my old one shows up?”

There was a pause; “Don’t ever use your old passport again,” the counter agent assured her. “Not unless you want to have Homeland Security officers all over you. The passport has been ‘flagged.’”

Denise wasn’t exactly sure what ‘flagged’ meant but  she didn’t feel like asking any more questions so she just took her new passport and left.

Life had pretty much returned to normal for Denise after this mad-cap week in Belize. She was back to work as a senior researcher at the lab and things were back to their usual routine. She still drove to the bank every Friday and cashed a check for her weekly spending amount. As she stood in line, the cashier who she knew told her, “You know Miss Smith; you are probably one of the only customers  I have who still uses checks to get money out of the bank.”

Denise laughed and replied, “If you think that is something, guess what else, I don’t have a home computer, a TV or a landline telephone. I don’t even have an email address!”

The clerk gasped, disbelieving, mouth open. “Nope,” continued Denise, “don’t believe in those things. Just more and more ways for people to get into your pocket!”  She didn’t add the part where she also really believed it was more ways for people to spy on you too. But, she didn’t want to sound crazy so she shut up. She got her money and left; when she got home, she would carefully place the money in envelopes marked for their uses. She prided herself in going ‘all cash.’

Denise’s life continued on as normal and she was totally unaware of the van parked down the street from her condo that was tracking her movements. Denise, who had rarely had so much as a speeding ticket in her life had come to the attention of the ‘authorities’. It had all started when her passport had been stolen and then ‘marked’. While processing the new passport, the agent assigned to the replacement had noticed a distinct resemblance between Denise and an FBI most wanted poster of an international espionage agent, wanted and on the run for selling government secrets.

The agent marked the file and sent it to her boss who in turn, sent it on to the agency looking for the woman and they then, opened a file on Denise Smith.

The two agents reviewed the material they had on Smith. Agent Tim Curl reviewed it with his partner, “Denise Smith, age 42 years, not married, lives alone, long time researcher at a drug lab. No credit cards, no ATM cards, no TV, no land line, no computer, no email address, no internet banking. Uses a computer at work but only for company business and never takes any personal messages. Does all her correspondence by mail. Has one cheap cell phone that she rarely ever uses.”

His partner looked at him thoughtfully.  “Looks like she is hiding something to me.”  Curl shook his head in agreement and they decided to set up surveillance on Denise.

Denise continued her life, getting books and videos from the library and eating Top Ramen for lunch at work. She loved to read and watch old movies. She had decided that all cable company charges for channels were a scam and she though modern TV programs were a joke anyway. “Give me an old black and white any day,” she thought to herself as she checked out her latest selections.

The guys in the van followed her to work a couple of days but couldn’t get very close so returned to her condo. They felt they would have better reception here if Denise made any phone calls or tried to contact someone. They waited for a number of days with little success.

“She’s cagey, that one,” opined Tim Curl. Sandy, his big burly partner nodded in agreement.

“How do you think she is transmitting the data?” asked Sandy.

Tim shook his head. “I just don’t know. She’s basically not making any calls on that dumb cell phone of hers, there’s no phone in the condo, we checked. Any messages on the company computer are pretty regularly screened by their IT guys and we don’t think she even sends that many at work because she tells everyone ‘I don’t like computers’.”  He made a little girly gesture with his hand.

Sandy laughed. However, in the end, they were back to staring at their monitors with not a lot to go on.

Denise looked at her package happily. She had spent $39.99 to get the brand new tracking device that you could wear to track your heart rate, miles walked or run and a breakdown of the calories you had burned up exercising. She loved this! With this little baby in place she felt sure that those last five pounds would soon be a thing of the past. She couldn’t wait to try it out.

The next day was a Saturday and it dawned bright and beautiful. Denise woke up and went through her usual routine, eager to try out her new tracker on a short morning run. She popped a multivitamin and mixed up the green energy drink. It was supposed to be really good for you, so she tried hard not to look at it too much while chugging it down. She had no overtime this weekend so she was foot-loose and fancy free. She didn’t want to run too far, hard on the knees. But she could drop down to a walk by the time she got to the park and cool down that way. She might even treat herself to a coffee on the way back.

That Friday Tim and Sandy had gotten reamed by their boss. “I thought you said this one looked good!” he shouted at them. “We have gotten Intel that another data transfer is about to happen, this weekend and on your watch!” he yelled some more.

“Boss, boss,” Tim had his hands up pleadingly .  “We are watching her, we have the stolen passport, and we know she was in Belize at exactly the same time and same place as when the last data was delivered. She is the right age, right height, right color, she fits all the profiles. We think she is the one, we just haven’t been able to get her doing anything yet,” he pleaded.

“Great, great,” said the big guy. “But, by the way, you are both on duty this weekend, got that!” and he stormed off. They both nodded their heads glumly.

Saturday morning, bright and early, Tim and Sandy were parked inside the van drinking strong coffee and eating Dunkin doughnuts. They had moved the van closer to Denise’s condo.

“I just can’t help thinking that she is going to do it this weekend. We have just got to keep her close,” said Tim. Sandy nodded.

Inside, Denise had suited up in T-shirt, spandex ¾ length pants with the little zipper in the back for keys, and running shoes. The new ones that she had completely splurged on, Nikes. “With complete arch support,” she reminded herself. She proudly clipped the little tracker device on her T-shirt so that it could get an accurate reading of her exercise. She went out the door and carefully locked the lock and zipped the keys into her pocket. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and hit the button on the tracker to start it. She stretched a couple of times and then started a slow jog to the park.

Tim hit Sandy in the arm, “That’s it!” he said excitedly.

“What’s it?” Sandy queried through half chewed doughnut.

“It’s that gadget on her shirt. It must be very low frequency so we are not picking anything up. Get your gun,” he said to Sandy quietly getting out of the van to follow Denise.

Denise jogged while checking her watch occasionally to see if she was making good time. She tried reading the tracker upside down but decided it couldn’t be done and satisfied herself that she was just going to have to wait for the results when she stopped. She jogged about twenty minutes and started her slow down walk as she entered the park. She checked her pulse a couple of times to see if she was getting it high enough to do some good. After walking a bit she decided to get that coffee at the vendor stall in the park, cheaper than Starbucks. She was getting her Americano, hot to go, when she stopped. There was that older gentleman who she had met on her trip to Belize.

“Mr. Marshall, Mr. Marshall, hey is that you?” she held out her hand for a shake with the older guy when she got tackled and knocked to the ground. Sandy had done his job with a nice flying tackle and had grabbed her just before she had a chance to hand off the data stick attached to her shirt to her contact person. Mr. Marshall, the contact person, took off running in a surprisingly fast fashion for such an old guy.

Back at their headquarters, Denise was explaining over and over again that she was not who they thought she was. Tim and Sandy had by this time confiscated the tracker device and had given it to one of their own IT guys who confirmed that there was nothing else in the design except a heart rate and calorie counting device as stated. They at long last had come to the realization that Denise was not, in fact, ‘their girl’ but they began to have a lot of questions about the man she had met at the coffee carrel and why he had run off.

Denise gave them as much information as she could and by data tracking through the AAA club records and the airline records they were able to confirm that Daniel Marshall and his wife Helene had been on the trip to Belize and both had a questionable past. Denise was able to id them both and the agency confirmed that Daniel and Helene were actually professional ‘transporters’ of information.

A couple of hours later Denise was released. They had fed her with high calorie doughnuts and terrible coffee. She was sure her diet was ruined for a week.

“But, why were they interested in me?” she had asked them.

“It was your passport they were after,” Tim replied. “You may not have noticed it but you are the same age, height, and weight and hair color as Mrs. Marshall.”

“But she is so much older than me,” Denise said.

“Play acting and makeup,” said Tim “mostly to get your confidence.”

“Didn’t you have a drink with them of some kind the evening you lost your passport?” asked Sandy.

Denise thought, “Yes, I did. I was going to order my regular Mai Tai but Mr. Marshall insisted that I try some kind of local drink, forget what he called it. Too strong.”

“Right,” said Tim. “They either put something in your drink or just got you to talking so much that you forgot your bag on the chair. ‘Marshall’ escorted you to dinner and she went to powder her nose and circled back and snatched up your bag with the passport before you knew what had happened.”

“But why did she want it?” queried Denise.

“She needed a new name to get through customs. The customs officially have been alerted to both of them and are on the lookout for any of their aliases. Also, stolen passports are very, very expensive to buy so this was quick and cheap.”

Denise shook her head, she couldn’t believe it. Nothing like this ever happened to her. The agents had been very solicitous of her and were literally trying to brush her off when their boss came in and stopped them.

“We really appreciate your help Ms. Smith. These are very bad people selling some pretty valuable stuff and we would really like to catch them. Your assistance is very helpful and we are so sorry for any rough stuff.” He glared at Sandy.

“But, but……” Denise struggled with what to say.  “Why me, why did you think I was involved?”

The Boss sighed a bit, “Miss Smith, you matched the description of one of the people we thought we might be looking for. You were also at the right time and the right place for what we believe was the last stolen data transfer point, that being Belize. Also,” he paused, not sure he should say this, “you are so, well, very, very off the usual electronic grid of most people, it made us somewhat suspicious.”

Denise stared at him trying to grasp the significance of his meaning. He smiled at her and excused himself from the room. She accepted a ride home from the two arresting agents and they smiled and waved goodbye in good PR fashion. They were hot to get after the real culprits.

Denise let herself back in the condo. They had given her the Tracker back but it was sort of hopelessly pulled apart now and of no use. They had given her a form to fill out to make a replacement claim.

She sat down at her kitchen table, just a little stunned by the events, thinking. Finally, she said out loud to Frisky the cat, “Well, maybe one ATM card wouldn’t hurt.”

the end

Samuel Takes a Trip – Pt I

14 Thursday Oct 2021

Posted by webbywriter1 in aging, exercise, Crime - Fioction

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(Chap 5 of The Jeremy Beans Files book)

The Beans’ household was sleeping.

David and Alice Beans snored gently in the master bedroom. Paws, the cat, slept close to Alice’s feet. Tyler Beans, aged fourteen, sawed logs in his long twin bed in his own bedroom. He dreamed of

walking up to the podium and accepting the first prize in the national science fair. He posed for pictures with his mom and dad. Samuel and Jeremy tried to get into the picture but Tyler shooed them away.

Jeremy Beans, aged twelve, snored gently and dreamed of catching a long fly. He caught it and the crowd went wild. His teammates ran to him and pounded him on the back. He turned over in his twin and pulled at the orange and brown plaid bed cover. He disturbed Beamer, the dog, sleeping at the foot of the bed. Beamer lifted his head a moment and then laid it back down with a grunt. 

A bright moonlight shone on the Beans’ back yard. It shown on twinkling dewdrops covering the grass and two large maple trees in the back. All was silent and still. A dark shadow appeared at the back corner of the slum-stone fencing. The shadow came over the wall silently and dropped to the grass in a crouch. The figure paused, listening.

Inside, Samuel Beans, almost eight years of age, tossed and turned in his sleep. His dreams were restless and intense. He clutched his gold and black metal tiger in both hands. At one point, he even cried out a little.

“No, no. Not him!” he said softly to the air.

A battle raged on in Samuel’s brain. He was back in the desert. It was like the one where they had been before. Where he had gotten lost one time with Jeremy. When they landed in the wrong location through the portal. A portal given to Jeremy by his uncle Al.

Samuel dreamed on.

The sand whirled around and it was hot. The sun was dropping but it was still hot in the desert and Samuel was frightened. He was with a little boy, a few years younger. The boy was small and skinny, and also very sick. Jeremy was trying to help him. They desperately needed to hide. Jeremy was frantically trying find a place and it seemed hopeless. They were in a small village with lots of sand and few buildings.

They had been eluding the men on horseback for two days. But, the men were strong and the horses were fast. They would be here in no time at all. Jeremy wanted to weep with frustration. The little boy with him needed rest. They both needed water and a place to sleep.

Toward the outskirts of this very tiny village, Jeremy spotted something different. It was a small house. Or was it a house? He hustled the little boy toward the structure. A house? No, there were no people living there and there was no real door. Just an opening with writing over the entrance. It was in Arabic so Samuel had no idea what it said. He went inside dragging the boy behind him. It was immediately cooler here and the wind stopped. He pressed his face to the thick plaster wall. It felt cool and inviting.

The Arabic boy shivered even with the heat, goosebumps on his arms. His large brown eyes looked sunken in his small, pointed face. His black scraggly hair was plastered to his head with sweat and his lips were dry and cracked. Samuel looked back at his companion again with concern.

If we could just find a place to lie down, maybe he’ll get better, Samuel thought to himself. Half of him believed it.

He took out his precious reserve of water and had the boy sit down. Then he squeezed some drops from the leather pouch into the boy’s mouth. The kid swallowed gratefully and closed his eyes. His hands still clasped a smaller leather pouch tied around his waist. He had kept one hand on the pouch their entire journey. Samuel had wondered many times what was in the pouch and why the boy clutched it so tightly. He allowed himself some drops of water and rolled them around in his mouth before swallowing. They weren’t going to last if they didn’t get more, he thought desperately to himself. 

Samuel left the boy and got up to explore the small building. There was more writing, in Arabic, on the walls. In the front, there was a small platform, like what they had in church back home. Samuel wondered if this was a church of some kind. He went and touched the platform, it too was cool; done in a black and white streaked marble.

Fingertips trailing along the edge, he felt his way to the back of the podium. It was not a lot taller than he was.

Geeze, these people must be short, he thought. Not like those guys on horseback. Man, they were huge!

Samuel thought of the men on horseback, all wearing turbans, black leather belts and curved swords stuck in their belts. Frightening.

Behind the marble podium, Samuel stared into the gloom. Was that a hole in the floor? He went overand stared down. It was and there was a rough wooden ladder leading down. He thought he could see a flickering light at the bottom. Cautiously, he turned around and went down the ladder carefully so he didn’t miss his step, like Jeremy always told him. He dropped to the bottom and thunked lightly on dirt floor. There was an old torch stuck in a holder in one wall. He went forward and saw dim corridors going off in two directions.

What the heck? He thought to himself. This very much reminded him of someplace else he had been. On another adventure with Jeremy and Uncle Al. It had been a crypt with a lot of skeletons. Was this the same? On tiptoe he went forward and saw carved into the hard packed dirt, squarish cubicles. There were a couple that were empty, further on he found the bones. There were rows of dead people. Mostly skeletons that were bones with some cloth hanging off them. There were two that were a little fresher; he averted his nose. Further in, they were just very old bones lying on their backs.

He had an idea. Yes, they could hide here. Who could find them? Who would think to look? Hustling back up the ladder, he went to retrieve his companion.

“Kid, hey kid.” he shook the little boy’s shoulder. The boy had fallen to sleep where he sat, curled up in a ball. Samuel had a moment of discomfort. “Kid,” he didn’t want to shout or make too make noise.

Slowly the boy opened his eyes and focused on Samuel’s face. “We got to go. Get up. Please.” Samuel made upward motions with his hands. Wearily, the boy let Samuel pull him up to his feet. He was very weak now. Samuel placed one skinny arm over his own shoulder like they learned in camp and pulled the boy toward the podium.

“You got to climb down,” he pointed at the ladder. The boy slowly shook his head no.

“You got to, they’re coming.” Samuel pointed back at the door. He knew the kid couldn’t understand the language but the gestures were pretty clear. The boy’s big eyes rolled back to the door and he sighed. He turned and put one foot on the ladder and then another.

Samuel hung onto the back of the boy’s cotton shirt until he was down several steps, then he

started to go down himself. Suddenly he stopped. His stomach lurched. They had left some

footprints in the dirt on the church. Sweat popped up on his upper lip. They can find us, he thought. He let go of the boy’s shirt and went back into the church. He flecked the dirt and dust around until the footprints were pretty well gone. Have to do, he thought hurriedly as he followed the boy down.

(Continued in part II.)

See more of Courtney’s writing on:

https://sites.google.com/view/webbywritercom/page-5?authuser=0

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