I wanted to be somewhere else, away from everything and everyone.

Work, family, decisions, and pressure, all came together at once, to such an extent that, finally, I just couldn’t find a reason to get out of bed.

I looked up at the ceiling, then around the loft, a space I had to fight for, and could, at first, barely afford.  Then, it symbolized my success, the first of many.

Now?

If I was to think long and hard about where I was right now, I wouldn’t want to think long and hard about it.

Last night lingered in my mind.  The girl I thought was the one, who broke up with me, at least not by text, but in person.  It was not me, she said, but she was not ready for a serious commitment.  Neither was I, but I think I wasn’t the one for her.

Work had taken precedence, as it always did, despite the constant advice from both friends and family that I should draw a line in the sand before it was too late, I didn’t listen.

The cell phone on the side table erupted with a song that Anne had put on there some time back, a reminder of something I’d lost.

Work.

I ignored it, suppressing the temptation to throw it against the wall in the hope that breaking it would somehow provide some relief.

Then I counted down the seconds to when it would ring again.  Arty, my business partner, and truly a man with no life other than work, was persistent.

Sixty seconds passed.

That awful song!

I picked it up and answered, “What?”

“Where are you?  Tell me you’re just running late.”  No mistaking the panic in his tone.  Nothing unusual.  He was capable of doing it himself, just chose not to.  Not today.

“Get it done, and don’t call me again until it’s settled.”

I disconnected the call and switched the phone off.

I rolled over hoping the perspective would change but it was still the same space, except for one minor detail, a painting my mother did a few years back of the house by the lake we had grown up in.

It was, and still is a sleepy little town few people visited, and the young couldn’t wait to get out of, like my brother and I.  My sister, she had no big-city dreams, married the bit next door, and lived nearby.

I hadn’t seen the house, or her, since my mother’s funeral eight months before, and was always promising to go but never found the time.

I guess now was the perfect time to go home, and try to make some changes, before it was too late.

…

There were several ways of getting to Alpenville, tucked away on a small Cove, off an estuary, not far from the border, a picturesque setting with mountains on one side and the water on the other.

The first, by ferry, buy that had timing limitations, and I had to get to the ferry berth first.  The second, by road, but it was an unnecessarily long and convoluted drive.  The third was by floatplane, where I could go to the airport and catch a plane.

I had only done that once when an old friend of my father ran the service, a long while back.  He’d obviously sold it, and the new people had turned it into a glossy tourist brochure.

It was expedient, and I knew the flight in over the water would be a sight to behold, which clinched the deal.  It would also take the least amount of time.

I turned my phone back on, and it beeped constantly with missed messages.  I ignored them and called the airline and lucky for me there was a seat available.  But I had just on an hour to get to the airport.

Of course, everything was conspiring against me, as if fate didn’t want me to leave the city, but by a quirk of fate, I walked through the terminal office door five minutes before departure.

The girl behind the counter smiled.  “Just in time,” she said, handing me a ticket and boarding pass.

She pointed to the plane, and I could see the pilot waiting.  When I was about twenty yards from the plane, I recognized the pilot, just as she recognized me.  Lucy Benn.  Granddaughter of my father’s friend, who, it seemed, followed in her grandfather, and father’s footsteps.

“As I live and breathe, Alpenville’s prodigal son.  Returning in disgrace, are we?”

Lucy had been a girlfriend, we had been engaged, I left promising to return.  Promises not honored.  That she would hate me was understandable.  We had not parted on the best of terms, and this was the first time I’d seen her since.

“It’s nice to see you too Lucy.”

She simply shook her head, took my backpack and put it in a compartment upfront, then opened the side door to let me climb in.  I would be sitting next to her the whole way, which could be uncomfortable.  She got in the other side. Sorted put the seatbelts, then handed me headphones.

“Put them on.  If there’s trouble, I’ll let you know.”

She went through the pre-flight checks and got clearance from the tower, and we were off.

It didn’t surprise.me.she was a pilot, though back before I left home, she had always said she was going to fly real planes.  At twelve she had already been proficient at flying the small plane her father owned and operated.

She had taken me up in it once and it had been both terrifying and exhilarating.

A very few had a poker face.

Hers overall suggested contempt.

“Did you ever get to fly big planes,” I asked, picking a moment when she was distracted, looking out the side window.

She turned back.  “Did you find what you were looking for in the big city?”

Answering a question with a question, it was her way of evasion she used to use when she didn’t want to answer.

“No. It might please you to know that when I woke up this morning, I realized that I have no idea what I’m doing anymore.  My first thought was to come home but given your depth of feeling and the fact I can’t cry on my mother’s shoulder, I guess I made a terrible mistake.”

It was a sad story, but true.  I hadn’t thought for one moment I might not be welcome, except by my sister, Suzanne, who didn’t care what anyone else thought.

She said nothing, which was probably better she didn’t.

A few minutes passed before she said, “Yes. Had to go through hoops simply because I was a girl.  Showed them.  Got to fly A380s, slightly bigger than this, married a pilot, the basted cheated on me, so I came home and stuck to what I know, flying these planes.  They don’t let you down.”

So maybe we would not have spent the rest of our lives together like we had promised each other at graduation.

“I guess we both have our unresolved issues.”

We did.

The conversation ended there, and for the rest of the flight, there was silence, except when she checked in with the various flight controllers. I may also have nodded off for a whole venture when I was jolted away, we had just landed on the water and headed towards the pontoon.

I could see Suzanne and Cecile, her daughter, waiting on the pontoon.

As soon as I was off the plane she came over and gave me a hug.

“It’s good to see you, but you’re not going to believe what’s happened.  Dad’s just been taken to the hospital, and they don’t think he’s going to last much longer.”

© Charles Heath 2022

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

Before we embarked on the great driving expedition, for which I was beginning to think might be harder than it seemed to Boggs’ one-track mind, we decided to go and check out the mall, and if, indeed, there was an underground river, or, at the very least, if his flooding theory was correct. 

We were going to need very old clothes, and when I left the next morning, my mother noticed it.

“I’m going to do some gardening with Boggs.  He came up with this notion we could help out tat the old folk’s home.”

“That’s a nice thought.”

And it was a lie I knew would eventually come back to bite me.  My mother hadn’t exactly told me to stop seeing Boggs, because she was beginning to think his mental capacity had been diminished after the beating.

It was a logical and perfectly acceptable reason for his odd behavior.

I went directly to Boggs’ house, and he was waiting for me.  From there it was about twenty minutes, to a spot where he knew the surrounding fence had a hole big enough for us to crawl through.

It was odd seeing the place again, sitting out a few miles from the town, looking forlorn.  At the front entrance, off the road specially built between it and the town, there were miles of cyclone fencing, with signs alternately telling people to keep out on threat of prosecution for trespass, and more recently, hazard signs proclaiming the whole area was unsafe.

From where we’d stopped, we could see the carpark, enough for hundreds of cars, a bus terminus, a taxi rank, and the front façade of the shopping center, mostly looking like the front of a castle, with towers and ramparts.

There had been auxiliary plans for a medieval theme park at one stage, that would have blended in with the mall buildings, but that had to be abandoned, even though the land allocated to it was stable.  Or so a surveyor said.

We continued on until we reached the side leading to the marina.  From this vantage point looking one way, there was the ocean, and the other, the damage to the side of the mall buildings, the cracks, and, in places, where the roof had collapsed.

This would be the first time I’d set foot in the place since it had been a mall.

It had been popular, and there was always plenty of people shopping, eating and drinking, going to the cinemas, or just having a day out.  There had also been a museum dedicated to the naval days.

Now there was nothing.

It was ironic that as many of the castles in the British Isles that had been reduced to rubble, that was exactly what was going to happen here if someone didn’t take a bulldozer to the lot and level it out.

And that might happen sooner rather than later.  This was reputed to be the site of many a disappearance of a local person.  Three girls, two men, and a boy were supposedly hidden somewhere inside the mall, but the bodies had never been found.

I was thinking of those missing people when I said, with a degree of trepidation, “Do you really want to do this?  I mean, if you’re sure there’s an underground waterway here, I’ll happily take your word for it.”

Boggs just shook his head.  “You’re the last person I’d expect to chicken out.”

“It not that.”

“Isn’t it?  I can go by myself if you’re worried about getting hurt.”

“No.  You and me together.  I have to learn to fight those fears.”

Another look, then, “OK.  “Just a little further.”

Another minute or so, we reached a large rusting cylinder which had an almost illegible sign on it say the tank held inflammable liquid.  I tapped on the metal and it sounded empty.  I guess as part of the shut down they would have had to drain the tank.  I followed the tangle of pipes that ran slightly downhill for about 20 yards and then saw the opening in the fence Boggs had referred to.

We left our bikes behind the tank, among some bushes.

We then walked down to the fence line where the pipes passed through, and Boggs pulled back the chain wire.  A closer look showed it had been cut halfway up, making it easy to slip by, easier if there were two people along for the visit.

“Did you cut the fence,” I asked him.

He didn’t answer.  I guess he wanted me to think he had.

“Have you been here before?”

“Through here, yes.  A few times.”  He held the wire away and I climbed through.  I did the same for him on the other side, and he joined me.  The two halves melded back together so from a distance no one could tell the fence had been tampered with.

From the fence, we had to cross the access road to the marina, and across a carpark, now overgrown with weeds, and bushes, with the odd tree springing up through the cracks in the concrete.

The wall, when we reached it, was where several large cracks joined, and part of the wall had fallen away leaving a hole large enough to crawl through.  I put my head through the crack and could barely see anything.  There was light coming from the seaward side, but on the other, it was inky darkness.

There was also a very disturbing aroma, like freshly laid concrete crossed with the smell of a garage repair shop.  Years of spilled oil and grease.

“Is it safe?”  I asked.

Boggs shrugged.  “It could all fall down at any moment.  You read the signs on the fence.  Basically, this is, on one hand, cheating death.  On the other, we could be on the verge of an interesting discovery.”  Then, without another word, he went through the gap and inside. 

A few seconds later, I could see the light from his cell phone.

I shrugged.  If anything happened, like the building falling on me, I probably wouldn’t feel it.  And he was right, we could be on the verge of an interesting discovery.

I followed him inside and slid down the broken concrete and bricks to a dirty but solid-feeling floor, where Boggs was waiting, the light from his phone pointed in the direction of a storefront.

And looking at a dummy still dressed in clothes left behind.

I couldn’t help but think I’d seen that style of clothes somewhere before.

© Charles Heath 2020

Investigation of crimes doesn’t always go according to plan, nor does the perpetrator get either found or punished.

That was particularly true in my case.  The murderer was incredibly careful in not leaving any evidence behind, to the extent that the police could not rule out whether it was a male or a female.

At one stage the police thought I had murdered my own wife though how I could be on a train at the time of the murder was beyond me.  I had witnesses and a cast-iron alibi.

The officer in charge was Detective First Grade Gabrielle Walters.  She came to me on the day after the murder seeking answers to the usual questions like, when was the last time you saw your wife, did you argue, the neighbors reckon there were heated discussions the day before.

Routine was the word she used.

Her Sargeant was a surly piece of work whose intention was to get answers or, more likely, a confession by any or all means possible.  I could sense the raging violence within him.  Fortunately, common sense prevailed.

Over the course of the next few weeks, once I’d been cleared of committing the crime, Gabrielle made a point of keeping me informed of the progress.

After three months the updates were more sporadic, and when, for lack of progress, it became a cold case, communication ceased.

But it was not the last I saw of Gabrielle.

The shock of finding Vanessa was more devastating than the fact she was now gone, and those images lived on in the same nightmare that came to visit me every night when I closed my eyes.

For months I was barely functioning, to the extent I had all but lost my job, and quite a few friends, particularly those who were more attached to Vanessa rather than me.

They didn’t understand how it could affect me so much, and since it had not happened to them, my tart replies of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ were met with equally short retorts.  Some questioned my sanity, even, for a time, so did I.

No one, it seemed, could understand what it was like, no one except Gabrielle.

She was by her own admission, damaged goods, having been the victim of a similar incident, a boyfriend who turned out to be an awfully bad boy.  Her story varied only in she had been made to witness his execution.  Her nightmare, in reliving that moment in time, was how she was still alive and, to this day, had no idea why she’d been spared.

It was a story she told me one night, some months after the investigation had been scaled down.  I was still looking for the bottom of a bottle and an emotional mess.  Perhaps it struck a resonance with her; she’d been there and managed to come out the other side.

What happened become our secret, a once-only night together that meant a great deal to me, and by mutual agreement, it was not spoken of again.  It was as if she knew exactly what was required to set me on the path to recovery.

And it had.

Since then, we saw each about once a month in a cafe.   I had been surprised to hear from her again shortly after that eventful night when she called to set it up, ostensibly for her to provide me with any updates on the case, but perhaps we had, after that unspoken night, formed a closer bond than either of us wanted to admit.

We generally talked for hours over wine, then dinner and coffee.  It took a while for me to realize that all she had was her work, personal relationships were nigh on impossible in a job that left little or no spare time for anything else.

She’d always said that if I had any questions or problems about the case, or if there was anything that might come to me that might be relevant, even after all this time, all I had to do was call her.

I wondered if this text message was in that category.  I was certain it would interest the police and I had no doubt they could trace the message’s origin, but there was that tiny degree of doubt, about whether or not I could trust her to tell me what the message meant.

I reached for the phone then put it back down again.  I’d think about it and decide tomorrow.

© Charles Heath 2018-2020

To write a private detective serial has always been one of the items at the top of my to-do list, though trying to write novels and a serial, as well as a blog, and maintain a social media presence, well, you get the idea.

But I made it happen, from a bunch of episodes I wrote a long, long time ago, used these to start it, and then continue on, then as now, never having much of an idea where it was going to end up, or how long it would take to tell the story.

That, I think is the joy of ad hoc writing, even you, as the author, have as much idea of where it’s going as the reader does.

It’s basically been in the mill since 1990, and although I finished it last year, it looks like the beginning to end will have taken exactly 30 years.  Had you asked me 30 years ago if I’d ever get it finished, the answer would be maybe?

My private detective, Harry Walthenson

I’d like to say he’s from that great literary mold of Sam Spade, or Mickey Spillane, or Phillip Marlow, but he’s not.

But, I’ve watched Humphrey Bogart play Sam Spade with much interest, and modeled Harry and his office on it.  Similarly, I’ve watched Robert Micham play Phillip Marlow with great panache, if not detachment, and added a bit of him to the mix.

Other characters come into play, and all of them, no matter what period they’re from, always seem larger than life.  I’m not above stealing a little of Mary Astor, Peter Lorre or Sidney Greenstreet, to breathe life into beguiling women and dangerous men alike.

Then there’s the title, like

The Case of the Unintentional Mummy – this has so many meanings in so many contexts, though I image back in Hollywood in the ’30s and ’40s, this would be excellent fodder for Abbott and Costello

The Case of the Three-Legged Dog – Yes, I suspect there may be a few real-life dogs with three legs, but this plot would involve something more sinister.  And if made out of plaster, yes, they’re always something else inside.

But for mine, to begin with, it was “The Case of the …”, because I had no idea what the case was going to be about, well, I did, but not specifically.

Then I liked the idea of calling it “The Case of the Brother’s Revenge” because I began to have a notion there was a brother no one knew about, but that’s stuff for other stories, not mine, so then went the way of the others.

Now it’s called ‘A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers’, finished the first three drafts, and at the editor for the last.

I have high hopes of publishing it in early 2021.  It even has a cover.