…

Q is for – Qualms – that state of uneasiness that cannot be explained

…

It would be true to say that Harry Cressey had turned the company’s fortunes around with some of the most interesting programs I’d ever seen.

In the beginning, when they were first mooted by the owner of the company, the current fifth-generation department store owner, I had to, and a lot of others had, reservations.

But when they were implemented one by one, and they worked, we stopped looking at the man and looked at the result.

It was no mean feat to turn around a lame duck and turn it into more than just a financial success.

It was the theme if a two page spread in the local newspaper was anything to go by, a story that encapsulated a managing director and a board of directors under pressure, a chance meeting and appointment of a financial consultant, Trevor Alexander Frederick Hall, and a fairytale ending for a company and quite literally the city we all lived in.

It was literally the difference between living in a vibrant, small town, single industry city or a ghost town.

Barnaby Oswald, the owner, an older photo that didn’t the stress of age, Trevor Hall, a recent photo beaming like the all conquering hero he was, the main office building and factories, an early photo and one as it was now, after a recent facelift, and a photo of about a thousand of the staff all looking like they had just been given a millions dollars each.

I’d been away the day the shot of the staff was taken

“What’s wrong with that photo?”

Alison came into my office and threw herself into the seat opposite my desk.  The clock on the wall behind her said one minute to eight.

Sane time every morning.

“Nothing.  All hail the hero of the hour.”

She snorted.  That was usually reserved for the hapless Barnaby Oswald, her uncle.  No, she wasn’t the boss’s daughter, but she was close enough.

“Look at that photo of Hall and tell me what you see.”

“An urbane middle-aged success story.”

I’d suffered her comments in the indubitable Mr Hall, humouring her because I thought, like quite a few others, there was no way he could save the sinking ship.

We were all wrong.

“Take a closer look.”

She had never told me what she really thought of him other than she had reservations.  But Alison was the sort of woman who had reservations about nearly everyone.

Her uncle had muscled her father out of the business and sent him to an early grave.  Hall, to her, was just the latest of a long list of follies.  Just look at how the business went from success to the Titanic in seven years.

I took a closer look.  The photo was too grainy and of low resolution to discern anything, but one thing I did notice was that his eyes were too close together.

“The newspaper photo doesn’t do him justice?”

She frowned at me.  “He’s a villain; I’m sure of it.  I did a search on the internet, and he didn’t exist five years ago. In fact, he simply appeared out of the blue, popping up in a Fortune 500 company, then a meteoric rise to partner in one of the most prestigious finance and banking corporations.  His reference letter was so glowing; to me, it’s the sort of letter a place writes to get rid of him.”

“Or that he is that good.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Trevor with Barnaby, their usual chat at the end of the day before going home.  He had looked over and seen Alison with me, and I thought I also saw him sigh.

I had little to do with him, so I was not an expert.  Alison had been his first PA and lasted a week. She never said what caused their parting, but there were rumours.

She went to say something but stopped when she saw him coming over.

He stopped at the door.  “Ashley, isn’t it?”

“Or ‘hey you’ perhaps more often than it should.  I go by either.”

Barnaby called all of the Admin assistants on this floor ‘Hey, you’.  He wasn’t good at names to faces or being polite, for that matter.

“Yes.”  He turned to Alison.  “You were asked not to come up here.”

“After hours, Trevor, and I am an Oswald, and this is my birthright, not yours.”  There was no mistaking the antagonistic tone.  “Your silly rules only apply during business hours.  After that, I can see whoever I want.”

“Be that as it may, just not up here.  Now, please leave, or do I have to call security?”

She glared at him, went to say something, then just shrugged.  “Whatever.”

Then she got up, nodded at me, and left.

“Sorry you had to witness that, but she has been causing trouble.  And apparently, she doesn’t like me.”  He shrugged.  “Be careful when you’re with her.  She does not have the interests of the company in mind.”

What could I say to that?

“Understood.”

A warning was given, and he left.  I went back to the paper, but it was too difficult to concentrate.  Alison was stuck in my mind, and it was not exactly for the right reasons.  I had always liked her, but she had never been as interested in me.

Damn her.

I walked slowly down the stairs a few minutes after Hall had left and came put onto the carpark on one side of the main office building to see Hall drive off in his Mustang, bought for him as a gift for his work in saving the company.

It was a car I’d always wanted but knew I could never afford.  Another of those pipe dreams I had.

My car, farthest from the front door and now alone in the pleb section, was different tonight for one reason.  Alison was sitting on the trunk.

Why would she be sitting on my car?  How did she know what car I owned, let alone where I parked it.

She smiled when she saw me.  “Ashley.”

I stopped two or three steps away from her.  “Alison.  To what do I owe the honour of this visit?”

“Don’t you mean, why is Trevor so worked up about me?”

“It’s above my pay grade, Alison.  Everything is above my pay grade, including you.”

“Didn’t that little tirade if his fuel some qualms about him in your mind?  I mean, who says that stuff about the boss’s niece?  Why would I not have the interests of the company at heart?  It is my family’s business, after all.”

I shrugged.  “It’s none of my business.”

“It would be if the whole thing came tumbling down like a house of cards.”

“Is it?”

“That’s beside the point.”

Another of the admin assistants, like me, had told me early on that courting ideas about Alison was like wrestling alligators.  She was, he said, dangerous and had caused a few admin assistants to get fired.

She slid off the back of the car into my space.  She was close, too close for comfort.  I had dreamed about looking into her eyes, but now, it scared me.

“You like me, don’t you?”

She gave me a penetrating look that was unsettling.

“Can I plead the fifth amendment?”

She smiled, leaned forward, and kissed me on the cheek.  “I like you too. But inevitably, people I like seem to only want the boss’s daughter and the kudos that goes with it.  Is that what you want?”

We were standing under a light and would make an interesting view if anyone was still working on this side of the building.  The lights were still on, and it would be mostly cleaners.  Overtime was banned unless absolutely necessary.

“Nobody cares what I want, Alison, and least of all you.  I don’t know what’s going on with you and Trevor; I don’t want to know.”

“Then I’ll say my piece, and then I’ll go.  Day three, one am in the boardroom, Trevor Hall raped me.  I threatened to go to the police.  He simply said if I did, he would expose my family’s true business dealings that caused all the problems.  I laughed at him, and the next thing I knew, my father was dead.  It was not a suicide.  He has a grip on this place, and he’s bleeding it dry.  He is a monster, and he needs to be stopped.  And now I have nowhere else to go.”

Tears were forming in her eyes.  I believed she believed every word she said.  I also knew she was very manipulative.

“If you don’t have any qualms about Treveor Hall, you should.  By this time next year, there will be nothing left of this place for my uncle, for me, our family, you, and everyone else.  It’ll be in a non-extradition country with the remarkable Trever Hall.”

It was a good story.  It had all the elements of truth in it, and it could be believable.

I pulled out my phone and dialled the one number on the screen.

She looked surprised.

When a voice answered, I said, “You were right.  She knows.”

Silence then, “You know what to do.”  The line went dead.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

…

P is for — Perhaps not.  What happens if you don’t do something

…

There comes a time when everyone has to pay the piper.

I remember when I was very young that my father came into my brother Jack and my room and had a talk, one of half a dozen or so that were supposed to give us grounding for later life.

Long after he’d gone, I realised each one had followed a mistake he had made and didn’t want us to follow in his footsteps.

This one confused me.  He had read us the story of the Pied Piper, how he had offered to rid the town of rats, and when he did, they refused to pay him.  What happened after that was retribution

If only they had paid the piper!

Of course, over time, memories fade and interpretations change, and often they are forgotten, or perhaps just the relevance.

That is to say, I finally understood what it really meant, but by then, it was too late.

My brother and I were like cheese and chalk.  Jack had grown up more like our father, and when our father was killed a dozen or so years ago in what the police called an unfortunate accident, my brother didn’t believe them.

Being the younger, I had no idea what anyone was talking about, but in my own way, I was glad he was dead.  I had seen what he had done to my mother, and it often surprised me now when I reflected on it why she stayed.

There were reasons for everything my mother once said, ones that can be told and others best left alone.  Trouble only comes from trouble.

Yes, both my parents often spoke in riddles.

But it was a dozen years since my father died.

A dozen years later, Jack left home, vowing vengeance on the men who he claimed killed him.

A dozen years since my mother and I moved out of the house, the house my father said he had bought for all of us, but a week after he died, some man turned up with two goons and threw us out

With nothing but the clothes on our backs.

Neither of us had realised my father was a small-time criminal juggling so many bad deals that it only took one to bring down the house cards.

And less than a dozen years since my mother was struck by a hit-and-run driver and killed, leaving me on my own, penniless and homeless.

Less than a dozen years since I moved across the country, changed my name and appearance, and made the acquaintance of a girl who had suffered much the same trauma as I had, we healed together.

And in those dozen years, I’d rebuilt my life.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was a life.

Until…

It took a few months before we realised that Jack was not the person we thought he was.  We didn’t so much see him than we heard about him and the ugly rumours that he had killed the Bellini brothers.

That would have been tolerable, but to learn he had taken over the Bellini brothers’ business was a surprise.  No, that wasn’t the half of it.  My mother believed it and suddenly feared for her life.

My brother had a streak of meanness in him, the same as our father, and they could go at it, right down to the inevitable scrap between them.

Then came the uglier rumours that we were thieves and liars and no better than the Bellinis, but it was the accusations of the next door neighbour, a widow who always had an eye on my father.  She said Jack killed him and had evidence.

Two days later, our neighbour was found dead, and in our letterbox that same morning was a brown bag with one word scrawled on it.  ‘Leave’.  In it was a pile of money, some of it blood stained.

The message has been received and understood.

I should have thrown that bag away, but it was the last tangible link to my brother.  I had hidden it away with the money and never thought it would see the light of day ever again.

So, when I saw it sitting on the kitchen table, along with all of the money from inside, when I came home that first day of the rest of my life, my heart nearly stopped.

“What is this?”  Eloise was looking very angry.

It took nearly a minute before I started breathing again.  How had she found it?  No one could ever stumble over it, ever.  I had told her a story of what happened to us, but it had been the sanitised version.  I had guessed most of it, and if I told anyone, they’d quite likely run.  Back then, Eloise was the only thing I had that wasn’t dirty.

There was only one explanation.

“How did you find it?”  There was only one person other than me who knew about it.  My mother.  But unless Eloise could communicate with the dead, I could not see how.

She held up a letter, yellow with age and stained like people and cars had run over it.  “It was delivered this morning, addressed to me.  It finally arrived eleven years after it was sent.  I nearly threw it in the bin, but I recognised the writing.  Your mother’s.”

I could see it had several addresses on the front as it crossed the country looking for her.

Of course.  When I told her about the money and leaving, she told me to throw it in the bin, that it was the proceeds of crime, and sent to us by Jack.  By that time, I had gotten over the fact that he was a criminal and said he was trying to keep us safe.

She simply said he was trying to get rid of us because she now knew he had killed my father and had the evidence, just like our neighbour.  We argued, and when she refused to tell me what it was, she stormed out in a rage, and remembering what had happened to neighbour, I went after her.

She was holding something, perhaps an envelope, in her hand, but by the time I caught up with her, it was gone.

Moments after that, I saw the car just before it hit her, and in that fraction of a second before the car drove off, I saw who it was and told myself it was not possible.

I knew she was going to tell Eloise who we were and how we got there, but when no letter arrived, I figured she had changed her mind.

“What did she say?”

“No.  You tell me what you think she said, and if it matches, we’ll talk.”

“If not?”

“You lied to me. What do you think?”

Well, that was the ultimate ultimatum.  I had no idea what my mother would say.  I marshalled thoughts, tried to drag back memories I’d long shoved into the deep recesses, and eventually came up with something remotely plausible.

And when I thought I had the lead in, my cell phone rang.  A severe expression from her told me not to answer it, but I grasped at a straw and hoped it wasn’t the one that broke the camel’s back.

I pushed the green button and said, “Yes?”

“Hello, little brother.  You’re a hard man to find.”

My heart did stop this time, and in that fraction of a second I had before I hit the floor, I saw Eloise’s look of anger suddenly change to one of utter fear.

It was an odd sensation coming back from the dead.  One second, everything was calm and peaceful; the next, Eloise was applying artificial respiration, probably second nature to her being an ER nurse at the nearby hospital.

I was alive, but just.  She had a phone in her hand and a voice saying, “Is he breathing? Is he breathing?”

“Yes.  Thanks.  Call me later.”  She tossed the phone and lifted my head onto her lap.

I was breathing, but it hurt, and I tried not to breathe deeply.  I should have been arranging to go to the local hospital, but there was a more serious matter to discuss.

I could see that she was distressed, firstly because of my deceit. And then at my near demise, though that might be a bit of an exaggeration, only a doctor could say definitely.  My immediate memory of events was hazy.  “What happened?”

“You answered the phone.  Then nothing.  Out like a light.  Who the hell was it?”

There were a hundred, no a thousand thoughts going around in my head, and all of them led to one conclusion.  “Someone you never want to meet.  You need to leave.  You need to get as far away from me, and this place, as fast as you can.”

I tried to look concerned, but short, sharp stabbing pains where my heart was skewed the look into something else.

“I don’t think I can leave you right now because, although you might not realise it, you just had a very severe medical episode.  I should be arranging an ambulance, but given what you are saying, that might not be wise.  But, Jonathon, it might be wise for you to tell me who it was and how they could do this to you.”

I took a deep breath and winced.  Mental note: less deep breathing if possible. It was the moment of truth.  She knew the characters, just not the right story.  I had kept mostly to the truth, but now, I would have to fill in the blanks.

“The one thing I never told you.  My brother is a criminal, Jack Schneider.  He was sentenced to life in prison, only it seems he has managed to reduce that to twelve years. Something I was assured would never happen.”

“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?  You will get to see your brother again?  You said he saved you.”

Another pause to consider the ramifications of what I was about to say.  If she had any sense, she would leave and not look back.

“That wasn’t the truth.  I turned him in to the police and that saved me, so technically, it was right.  My brother murdered my father, and when the lady next door accused him of it, he killed her, and when my mother accused him of it, he killed her too.”

“Oh.  That’s not good.  How does a three-time murderer walk free after so little time?”

“That’s just it, I don’t know.  The same as I don’t know how he found out I was the one who gave the evidence that convicted him.”

“And let me guess, it was your brother on the phone telling you he was coming to see you?”

“It was my brother, but he can’t possibly know where I am.”

“He got your cell number, and there’s only three of us who know it, and I didn’t tell him.  Let me hazard another guess: you’re in witness protection?”

I nodded.  She had once said she had no faith in the witness protection program because they had botched hiding her real identity twice, once allowing the man she was hiding from to turn up at her residence.

No prizes for me for guessing what happened, and at that moment, I realised that calling witness protection now could have catastrophic consequences.

Something else I remembered.  We had moved and there was no possible way Jack could have known where we were, and yet he knew where to deliver the bag of money and be able to follow and kill my mother.  Our whereabouts were supposed to be secret.

I had not put two and two together back then, but I was young, unworldly, and struggling with grief.

“The bag and money?”

“Left by my brother for mum and I to escape before he was arrested and put on trial.  He told us then to forget about him, change our names, and live out our days in peace.  There was enough.”

“Then he was arrested?”

“Yes.  Not long after, he found out it was me who put him away.  That visit, he nearly killed me.  He said he wouldn’t fail the next time.  There was not supposed to be a next time.”

“Which now seems likely there will be?”

“After the trial, he said he would find me, no matter how long it took.  I don’t think it will take very long if he has my cell number.”

“Your first mistake was to trust Witness Protection.”

My thought exactly.  I looked up at her, sighed shallowly, and said, “I should get up if I can.”

“Let me help.”

I rolled over on my side, and she got up off the floor.  I reached up to take her hand, and she steadied me as I slowly stood.  Then, I took a few moments to take some breaths to determine whether the pain was subsiding or getting worse.

Subsiding.

“You need to leave.  You don’t want to be here when he comes.  The last thing I want is for you to be hurt unnecessarily.”

I had been promised he would never leave jail.  So much for promises.  There was only one problem left in his life, and that was me.  And anyone associated with me, which meant Eloise.  It might already be too late.

Instead of heading to the bedroom and throwing what she needed into a backpack, she picked up the money.  Exactly one hundred thousand dollars.

“Money will be no good to you if you are dead.”

She had her back to me, and when she turned, it was a woman I’d never met before.  It was Eloise but someone else inside that familiar body.

“I’m not planning on dying, John.  But we will need it when we disappear.  After we take care of one very large problem.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“Easy.  You are the distraction, and I’m going to shoot him.”

And in that moment, that one look, that expression on her face.  It was very, very familiar, a face I’d seen before.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025