Thank you for the encouraging feedback. It's always nice to know what you think of the story. Enjoy chapter 3
Chapter 3
"Freeze!" yelled the figure in the open doorway.
It was James Anderson, with his gun arm out and steady. That is, it was steady until his eyes fell onto Frank. He was so surprised that he tripped over his own feet, tumbled down the steps and sprawled face first at the brothers' feet. His weapon shot out of his fingers and slid along the wooden flooring straight under the sofa towards Rufus.
The cat hissed, leapt on top of James, took a quick swipe and then fled into Joe's bedroom, so quickly at first that traction was impossible for his soft paws and he had to comically scrambled motionless before eventually picking up speed and shooting away.
Frank watched slack jawed as James bounded up and went after the freaked-out feline, apologising profusely, even though Rufus was already out of sight under the bed and is…well…a cat!
"What are you doing?" Joe shouted as James realised what a fool he was making of himself and turned back sheepishly.
"I thought you were fighting with someone, thought you were in trouble. Hi Frank."
"Hi."
Joe locked eyes with his brother and rolled them up to the ceiling. "Con Riley's nephew, eh? Who'd have guessed?"
Joe entered the office the next afternoon having visited James Anderson and a hairdresser to find both his fatehr and Con in situ, poring over their various tasks.
His hair was still full of static electricity. But not from his appointment at the hair salon, but via the very public dressing down he had received from Chief Collig in front of a room full of ear-flapping cops.
Con was beating a heavy tattoo on his keyboard with his middle fingers, his face about an inch from the screen, frowning fiercely, obviously not having a good time.
Fenton was finishing off a phone call. He looked up at Joe and made a 'come here' gesture with his index finger. Joe did not 'come here'; he stayed in the doorway and waited, crossing his arms tightly across his chest. Eventually Fenton replaced the receiver into its housing. "We've had a call concerning you."
"If it's about yesterday, I had a good reason for not turning the evidence over to the police until this morning."
"No not about that—" Fenton started to say, then realised what Joe had said, "—what do you mean you didn't turn the evidence over until this morning?"
"Uh."
"Oh never mind, this isn't about that…although you can bet your bottom dollar we'll be having words about that later!" Fenton grimaced and rubbed hard between his eyes. "You give me headaches, you really do." He started rummaging in his drawer for painkillers. "I think I've got a lead on someone who can come and work with you for a while, so your solo days are numbered. One of my old colleagues from my police days."
"Umm…you might have to rethink that, Dad. I've managed to sort myself out a partner – a young, dynamic guy who'll fit right in."
"And who would that be?" Con asked sardonically, clearly assuming it was another of Joe's jokes. "And how it is that you succeeded where your world-renowned-private-detective-father-with-all-the-connections couldn't?"
"That's what I'd like to know," Fenton agreed, tipping two tablets into his palm and reaching for his cup of water. He turned back to his smug looking son. "So. Come on then, impress us."
"I told you, I'm the ideas guru of the team, simple as." Joe glanced out into the corridor. "It's someone you know, actually."
Con finally looked up and wheeled his seat back so he could put his heels up on the desk and tuck his hands behind his head. "Drew, by any chance?" he asked, leaning back and making the chair creak.
"I'm not sure that Nancy would be too happy at being described as a 'young dynamic guy'."
"I dunno so much," Con said and winked at Fenton.
"Uh-oh, you're in trouble," Joe warned him. "The walls have ears, Con. Guess again."
"Jeeze – you don't mean…Oscar Smuff?!" he turned to Fenton in mock horror and then started guffawing loudly. "Now there's a match made in heaven."
"Can you imagine Smuff trying to escape from a burning building with Joe?" Fenton asked.
Con was clearly enjoying the turn of conversation. "Yeah, Joe leaping through the window like the well honed athlete he is…and then Smuff following and getting his fat ass stuck in the window frame."
Fenton laughed loudly, unable to get any water into his mouth to swallow down the tablets that he had just thrown into his mouth. "Young and dynamic – thy name is Smuff."
"Like Winnie the Freakin' Pooh."
Joe shook his head. "Guys…you're not even trying now!"
Fenton winked in return at Con and finally managed to down the foul tasting medication. "Just spill, Joe, unless you'd like us old guys to demonstrate our dynamism through using you as an example with our fists."
"Now that's not very nice!" Joe protested and stepped aside as Frank walked in.
Fenton stood up so quickly that his chair shot back and slammed the wall and the water he was holding sloshed across his desk. "Junior!?"
Frank grinned. "Looks like you could use some help, if you still want me of course?" Then he lowered his chin and made a play of staring threateningly out from under his eyelashes at Con. "And the walls did have ears, Con, I heard every word you said about Nan."
"Holy smoke!" Con grunted as his chair threatened to upturn itself. "Sorry, I didn't mean…it's just that Drew always says— "
"It's okay, Nancy's briefed me on your working relationship. You wouldn't want me to soil your good 'name', would you, Con?" Frank said, making it ridiculously clear that he knew, unlike the other two, that Con's name was short for 'Constantine'.
Con put his palms up in supplication as Fenton finally got over the shock and stumbled around the table, banging his knee in his urgency. "Of course we can still use you!" he blurted out, embracing his oldest son. "When did you get back? Have you seen your mother yet? How did it go in Seattle? What do—"
"Hey, slow down Dad, you sound just like Joe did yesterday! I saw Mom this morning while Joe was getting his hair cut. Tell you what, why don't we all get some chow and have a catch up? My treat."
"Now you're talking my language," Con agreed. He came across to shake Frank's hand and pat him on the shoulder. "Welcome back, kiddo."
Joe and Con volunteered to go out on a lunch buying mission, which was more designed to allow Frank and his father to have some time alone.
As soon as they were out the door, Fenton turned to his son and slipped an arm about his shoulders. "So, how did it go?"
Frank slowly smiled. "Dad, you were right, I am all the stronger for it," he simply said. "I'm glad we had that talk at Carson's house. And I appreciate now just how difficult it must have been to tell me about it."
Fenton regarding his son in silence. "It was necessary," he said eventually, "you were sliding away from us." He began leading Frank further into the office before having another thought and turning back. "You do know that Con was just pulling Joe's leg about Nancy don't you? Con really respects Nancy, likes her a lot."
"Of course I do. Any fool can see that Con and Nancy are good friends. It's just the way they are together – point scoring. And anyway, Nancy told me his big secret, so he'll have a hell of job getting away with anything from now on."
"What big secret?"
Frank half grinned. "Nothing."
Vanessa stared at the desktop publishing document open on her PC screen.
She had carefully measured the length of text she needed, so, feeling confident, she shifted her curser to the pull down text bar, clicked on the plus sign at the bottom then coasted across to the next page and deposited the rest of the script. It shot down the page until it stopped…a couple of millimetres short of its target.
"For pity's sake!" she grouched and gave her mouse a violent shove. The action caused her to catch a nail against the edge of the keyboard. "OUCH!" She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked for a couple of seconds before pulling it out and inspecting the carefully manicured enamel. All was safely intact, no first aid required. She smiled slightly, remembering how Joe compared them to ladybugs nesting on the tips of her fingers.
Moulding her palm around the mouse again, Vanessa gazed slack faced at the screen, her other hand straying up to twist her ash blonde hair into a disorganised rope as she debated the solution to her text problem.
There were two choices: either edit the text AGAIN, or make the accompanying picture smaller – which of course would cause everything else on the page to misalign. Whichever she chose, she was in for a lengthy fix-up job. She gave a loud sigh; there was no easy solution.
She was so bored of creating countless brochures, pamphlets and newsletters. Yep, it had been fun at first, thrilling even, but as the saying goes…once you've edited one, you've edited 'em all…especially as Compute-Soft would not allow her to step out of the confines of the company's corporate image and uniformity.
What she really wanted was to have rein of the new website, but her line manager was territorial and Vanessa could not get anywhere close to it. It was so frustrating to be bubbling over with ideas with no outlet, but Nicholas (or 'Nick' as he preferred to be titled) was having none of it.
Even worse was suspecting he thought her a dumb blonde, even going as far as to openly stare at her breasts. Mind you, he was not very tall and as she was nearly six feet, it perhaps was not entirely his fault if they were right in his eye line winking at him. Added to that the fact their conversation was always so stunted as he had nothing to say to her…it did not make for an easy working relationship.
How jealous she was of her boyfriend. She considered Joe Hardy as one of the lucky ones. Doing the thing he loved each and every day, and getting well paid for it, and getting to do his publicising stuff for the detective agency whenever he felt like it…not when it was dictated. He and Frank were as good as self-employed.
She glanced around and over the partitions to see if she was being observed, but no one was paying any attention, their heads down and working. So she clicked onto the Explorer icon, logged onto the net and minimised the view. If anyone was to now walk up behind, she would hear them and have time to close the connection. She was doing something very naughty – her daily rounds looking for interesting job openings.
Eventually, she found herself on a company site who were actually customers of Compute-Soft. They had recently purchased some web software in order to improve the practicality and performance of their job section. It had been an unwieldy affair before with slow pages that would often crash, so applying for anything on-line was always accompanied by much cussing as, invariably, Vanessa would be halfway through the form and it would simply freeze and refuse to cooperate further. It would be interesting to see how Compute-Soft's product had helped them.
Five minutes later and she had to admit that it was much improved – easier to navigate with none of the signs of the old prevailing gremlins. But then something caught her attention, something odd. She could not help but peer even more closely at the screen as if she was misreading something.
Frowning, she reached for the ring binder sitting at the back of her desk and cracked it open on her lap. In the folder were her own private records she kept as a safety net. Having had the experience more than once of a crashing computer losing all her hard work, out of habit, she always made a point of keeping paper notes.
Flicking through the alphabetical sheets, she found the one for the company and reviewed her notes. As she thought, they had ordered a higher spec software package than the one on the screen, one that was way more expensive. Someone had messed up and uploaded the wrong version! "Oops, someone's in trouble!"
She next went to the accounts system and had a look at the financial records. She was astounded! Not only had the company been supplied with the incorrect product, they had been charged for the original order. It was working fine, so the company probably had not even thought to look – that is if they had known what they were looking at, of course.
Out of curiosity, she flicked through the sheets until she found another similar order for software and then turned to her computer to check. Two minutes later and she was almost convinced it had been a one off mistake.
"I'll just check another to be sure," she muttered and selected one at random. "Ah, found another…oh!" It was the same as the last mistake, but this time, the company had not been billed for the wrong software, just the one they had been ultimately supplied with. Now she was confused.
She fully minimised her Internet connection and sat back thoughtfully. Someone had made mistakes that only she had noticed. On one hand, Compute-Soft had profited unfairly, and on the other, they had resolutely lost out! Her nose wrinkled with disgust. She knew she was going to have to go and speak to Nick about it. But first, she had a little bit of photocopying to do – anything to delay the inevitable!
Ten minutes later and she was tapping on his door with the ring binder under her arm.
"Come in," she heard a gruff voice call.
She pushed the door open and entered the room. Nick was sitting at his desk with a pen in his hand looking up at her. As she entered, he arose and put his spectacles down on his desk, is eyes dropping to her chest area.
Vanessa shifted the ring folder from under her arm to her front and his eyes immediately shifted their focus to her shoulder instead. She fought the urge to grimace and forced a smile to appear in its place. "Hi Nick. I wondered if you had five minutes to look at something?" She immediately bit down on the inside of her cheek at her own unintentional pun.
"Yes, he agreed, his eyes finally flicking to her face before just as quickly looking over her shoulder.
"I noticed some strange anomalies with some of the software orders we've supplied to our customers."
"How's that?"
"I'll show you…" She approached the desk and placed the folder down. Turning pages and pointing to the relevant notes, she explained what it was she had found.
Nick ummed and arghed and scratched his nose. "Have you mentioned this to anyone else?"
"No, I've only just noticed."
"Let's keep this to ourselves until we know what we're dealing with. I'll take the folder so I can make enquiries."
"Sure. It's all yours." She agreed and side shifted towards the door so her front wasn't entirely to him.
They both stood there for a few seconds, an uncomfortable silence settling which was only broken when Vanessa, in an overstated fashion checked her watch. "Gosh, is that the time? Gotta get going…the weekend cometh and so much to do! Thanks Nick. I'll speak to you on Monday."
"Yes," Nick agreed as she slithered quickly out.
"Eww!" Vanessa muttered as she escaped back to her own desk. She really found him creepy.
She did not sit back down again. Instead she began tidying up, using plastic transparent folders to segregate her work. Then her phone rang and she snatched it up, annoyed that someone was calling her right at the end of the day. She balanced the receiver under her chin so she could carry on sifting through the paperwork. "Compute-Soft, Vanessa speaking."
"Yo beautiful, how's it hanging?"
She haphazardly ordered the plastic folders in terms of urgency and slammed them noisily together against the desk top. "Hi Joe. Whaddya want?"
"Well you sound perky!" he grumbled.
"Too perky for some people's eyes," Vanessa countered. She made herself laugh. "Sorry, it's been a funny sort of a day." She leaned down, picked up her document case and slid the zip open.
"Well I think I can improve on it. Go and make yourself even more beautiful, if that's possible. Me, you…and Frank, we're hitting Danceland tonight."
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise and a smile played around her lips. "Frank?" She picked up her partly finished newsletter, and shoved it inside the case before abandoning it on her chair.
"Yep, the Frankster's back!"
"Really? Very very much count me in!" She reached for her lightweight jacket.
