The Albemarle Affair

by
C. M. Albrecht

United States of America
© 2008 – Carl M. Albrecht
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 1-61658-273-1 ASIN: B001EW51MA

No part of this book may be copied, printed,
sold, or distributed in any manner whatsoever,
including, but not limited to, compct disk
copies, without express written permission
from the publisher. This book is produced in
electronic format, and the laws covering
copyrights applies to this document in whole.

First Publication.
Published in the United States of America
eTreasures Publishing
P.O. Box 71813
Newnan, GA 30271

This book is entirely fictional and bears no
resemblence to any actual person or place, in
content and cover art, therefore, is based solely
on the author’s vivid imagination.

Chapter One

Melodie Stark fidgeted her bare toes together
beside her canopied bed. She should have been
asleep two hours ago but…the voices. She knew,
well, that’s what the doctor told her, they were just
imaginary, but now. She felt sure they were real
this time.
One finger continued to nervously and
unconsciously twist and tug at a coil of auburn hair
as she moved ever so slowly across the rich
Oriental carpet to the heavy oak door. She pressed
her ear to the door, strived to hear. Voices. Yes!
Finally she took a breath and dared open the door
the faintest crack.
From somewhere below, angry voices rose up to
her. Melodie listened, but still could not make out
individual words. But she knew they were talking
about her. She just knew. Deciding her fate.
Tony! She clearly heard him yell ‘Tony.’ And
then her voice. Not so loud, but sharper. Oh God,
how had she ever got herself into this mess? Why
had she ever trusted this man? Rich. So smart; so
educated. He always looked perfect in his fine
suits, but -– well, if she couldn’t even trust her own
father, a man of God! Maybe all old men were like
that. And her foster mother…oh, those cold wet
eyes had hated her from the moment she crossed
the threshold.
Melodie caught a sudden glimpse of herself in
the cheval mirror by her dressing table. A slight girl
of eighteen. Fat. She was so fat. Every time she
saw herself in the glass, she seemed fatter. She
had never thought of herself as being pretty, but
Tony thought she was beautiful. Her hands moved
unconsciously over her cotton pajamas to the
swelling in her stomach. Oh, Tony…why couldn’t
Tony just come and get her, take her away from
this house? Why hadn’t she listened to him in the
first place?
She shrank back against the door. It closed
quietly as she slipped slowly to the floor. Her legs
splayed ungraciously out before her as she sat with
her back against the door, lost in her reverie.
Was it her fault? All of it, or part of it? Maybe.
Tony insisted it was not. And she wanted to
believe him, but…
Abruptly a dull and distant thump and scream
interrupted her musing.
What?
Silence. Had she really heard something?
After what seemed an eternity of utter silence,
she thought she heard sounds again, but now they
came from beyond the open window of her
bedroom. She forced herself to her feet and moved
as if hypnotized to the window where she knelt and
peered out.
There in the bright moonlight they were dragging
a body along over the lawn. They were dragging it
by the legs.
Tony! My God, it’s Tony! She sank back and
tried to think clearly. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.
Her eyes must be playing tricks on her again.
Finally, Melodie raised her head and looked out.
Although hours might have passed, there they
were, still dragging the body, but it had changed. It
wasn’t Tony after all. She giggled and twisted at
strands of hair. It was Toby! She almost laughed
aloud, but put one hand to her mouth. She didn’t
want them to know she was still awake. She
breathed a long sigh of relief. Toby. Just poor
Toby. But why would they drag poor Toby around
in the middle of the night? Well, at least it wasn’t
Tony after all. They certainly sent Tony away and
told him never to come back, but tomorrow he
would come. He loved her. Surely he’d come.
Tomorrow.
She moved back to her bedside. Tony,
Toby…it’s so confusing sometimes. She pulled
back the bedclothes and snickered as she crawled
into her bed. Some people already thought she
was crazy. She knew that. She heard them
whispering. Wow, if I ever told anyone about
tonight, they’d really think I’m crazy. She giggled
and rolled over onto her side, still twisting at the
lock of hair. Her mind began to slip into a dream
state. She caught hazy glimpses of the storefront
church, her mother clutching her Bible, her Rock -
the TV people, and then a more pleasant vision:
She began to dream of her and Tony under the
mimosa tree, and as she slipped more deeply into
the dream she found solace at last.
The faint last sound she heard came from the
corridor beyond her door as the tall clock struck
midnight.

Chapter Two

The Jesperson Building had seen better days.
Keely Foster wrinkled her nose at the lobby smell.
“Well, maybe it gets better up higher,” she
commented.
“You look nice,” Parker told her, smiling at the
smart white blouse and full blue skirt Keely wore. “I
like dresses better than slacks.”
“Jeans and stuff are comfortable, but I don’t look
good in slacks,” she told him. “And thanks for the
compliment. Sometimes I think you never notice.”
“Oh, I notice. I notice,” he said with a leer.
The elevator growled, but it took them to the fifth
floor where they found a pebbled glass door that
read: A & E Investments.
Parker Hall opened the door and they entered a
large office space with only privacy panels
separating the different desks. A middle-aged
matron at the desk facing the door mildly looked up
at the pair.
“Eh, Foster and Hall,” Parker told her. “We’re
here to see Edie.”
“Edie? Haw!” The woman jabbed a thumb at the
space next to her. Right over there.”
Parker and Keely looked at each other, and
moved to the indicated space.
Sitting behind a cluttered desk sat a sour-faced
middle-aged hairless man with a paunch and a big
cigar. His tired face wore a harassed expression
as he looked up at them. His white shirt was
wrinkled and open at the throat and a tightly
knotted tie had been pulled away to let the second
chin have breathing room. His eyes softened
briefly as he looked approvingly over Keely’s
slender well-shaped body. “Nice outfit,” he said in
a gravelly voice. “I hate that women don’t wear
skirts anymore.” He obviously liked her auburn hair
and pert nose, but then his gaze shifted to Parker’s
six-foot-two hundred-fifty pound frame, his innocent
face behind glasses, and his ill-fitting suit. The
man’s expression turned doubtful.
“Mr. Edie?” Parker said in an uncertain voice.
“Edie? Haw! My name’s Ayoobi,” the man
growled. “What do you want?”
“Eh…” Parker began but Keely got the words out
first. “We’re Foster and Hall, private investigators,”
she explained. “You left a message on our
answering machine?”
Ayoobi leaned back and blew out a thick cloud
of dark blue smoke that made both Parker and
Keely hold their breaths.
“Oh…that.” His eyes expressed doubt. “You’re
not exactly what I expected.” He leaned forward
again and studied the pair more closely. “You sure
you got any experience?”
“Oh, we’re professionals,” Parker assured him.
Parker held out the card he had been holding.
Ayoobi took it, looked at it and laid it on his desk
amid the clutter of papers that already covered it.
“Okay, sit down.”
They drew up a pair of green plastic lawn chairs
and sat down facing Mr. Ayoobi.
“I own, or at least manage, several restaurants
in the area,” he told them. “The Edie you were
looking for died a spinster at the age of eighty-nine,
so you can forget about talking to her.” Lidded eyes
measured the pair and after a moment, he
continued, “Put simply, what I want is an
undercover detective to go into Edie's and find out
who’s ripping me off.”
“Somebody’s ripping you off?” Parker said.
“Boy, you really are a detective,” Ayoobi said.
He puffed and blew out another blue cloud.
Parker took a breath and tried again: “Luckily,”
he said with new enthusiasm, “I’ve worked as a fry
cook in the past, before…I became a private
investigator.”
“A fry cook? Good. That’s good. You can
blend right in then.”
“What exactly did you want us to do?” Keely
asked.
“Not us -– him. I can’t afford to pay two people,”
Ayoobi said.
“We could do a lot better job with two of us on
the job,” she told him. “I’ve had waitress
experience. Between the two of us, we should be
able to wind your case up in less than a week, Mr.
Ayoobi.” She raised her bare arms prettily. “So in
the long run, you’d be saving money.”
Ayoobi looked at her. “Yeah, well maybe. See,
somebody’s ripping me off to the tune of at least a
hundred dollars a day. You know how it goes.
After a while a restaurant averages a certain
income, good days, bad days, it all evens out, and
the same with the food cost and labor and all like
that.”
“Suddenly at Edie’s, I’m running about a
hundred dollars a day low. Expenses still the
same. Wages still the same. But suddenly I’m
down about a hundred bucks a day -– maybe more.
Maybe it takes me a little time to wise up, but I’m
wised up -– and I want it stopped. You wouldn’t
believe the narrow margin of profit we have here -–
and I have people to answer to.” He leaned back,
grunting. “Besides, it just ain’t right. It ain’t right,
and I want it stopped. Can do?”
“Absolutely,” Parker said with what he hoped
sounded like lots of assurance. “Keely’s right, sir.
With us working together undercover, we’ll wind the
case up fast for you -- and we can give you a
special rate, too, for an endorsement…after we
successfully close your case for you.”
“Yeah? What kind of rate are we talking about
here then?”
Keely told him.
Ayoobi actually jerked to his feet. “Two hundred
dollars each a day plus expenses!” he cried. “What
expenses? I’m the guy got expenses. Look, while
you’re working there you’ll be eating my food,
wearing my uniforms. Two hun…” He sat back
down and took a puff on his cigar.
“Look, if I was rich I’d have called a big agency
from the Yellow Pages. Why do you think I picked
your name out of the Penny Saver? I’m on a tight
budget here, that’s why. You’re going to get your
meals. Two good meals a day for each of you.
You can have anything on the menu -– well except
the steaks. If I let you eat steaks, I have to let all
the help eat steaks. But hey, two solid meals a
day. That’s worth something. I’m going to put you
on the payroll as regular employees, so you’ll get
regular wages, too, and…”
As Keely held up her hand to protest, he raised
his voice and went on. “Okay, wait. Plus. Plus, I’ll
tell you what I’ll do. You work for wages and
meals, and when you wind the case up for me, I’ll
give you a bonus. What do you say to that?”
“What kind of bonus?” Keely asked.
“Well…”
After a lengthy argument that soon became as
complicated as the Israeli-Palestine peace talks, it
came down to Edie's regular restaurant wages —
with two meals a day each — for two weeks' work
followed by some vague talk of a 'nice' bonus — if
the detectives were successful in handing over the
perpetrator. Ayoobi continued to refuse to allow
himself to be pinned down to a specific figure.
Never one to say yes on the first date, Keely
kept at Ayoobi for twenty minutes more until finally
she managed to browbeat the commitment of a firm
one thousand dollar bonus out of him, and an
endorsement — if they caught the thief and put a
stop to the theft within their allotted two weeks.
“Plan to get lung cancer from all that cigar
smoke,” Keely said when they were back down on
the baking street walking toward their car.
“The cancer doesn't worry me nearly as much as
you do. Promising to catch the thief in two weeks,”
Parker said. His lean face showed his
apprehension. “I just don't know, Keelio.”
“Hey, what have we got to lose?” she asked.
“We can give the job a couple of weeks and still
come out all right. After all, this is our first case,
Park. This is our chance to show what we've got —
and unless you know something I don't know — we
haven't got anything else going right now, so as I
say, what have we got to lose? At least we'll be
getting paid over the next two weeks. After all we
have an office now. That costs money. We’ve got
to generate some kind of income. It's not great, I
admit, but it's a start. Our first real case. Sure, I
know we could fall on our faces…but if we pull this
off, we'll have something positive to use as a
reference. It'll look pretty good to list Edie's as a
satisfied client, won't it? Everybody around town
knows Edie's.”
“Yeah, that would look good. Boy, I haven’t
flipped an egg in a long time,” he said as his
thoughts drifted back to earlier times.
They hit it off the first day Keely came to work in
the cafeteria on J Street. Parker worked as the
morning fry cook — or as he liked to think of himself
— a lean mean frying machine. Parker’s first
glimpse of her took his breath away, and he knew
then and there, even as he flipped eggs over easy
in two egg pans at the same time, that Keely was
the one and only for him. But how was he going to
be able to talk to her?
As to Keely, she thought this string bean was
cute…and interesting, and a little voice told her that
he just could be the one. Of course that was before
she had a clue that behind Parker's innocent and
misleading façade of mild-mannered fry cook lurked
a wannabe crime-fighting private detective.
Parker shook his head to clear it. “It would be
nice to list somebody as a reference,” he agreed,
loosening up a little. “But sometimes you scare me,
Keelio. You sounded very sure of yourself up there
in Ayoobi's office.”
Keely looked at pedestrians who, clutched in the
oppressing grip of the scorching sun, moved like
zombies along the sidewalk. Cooking heat waves
roiled up from the pavement, dazzling her eyes. A
kid walked by, desperately trying to keep up with
his rapidly dissolving ice cream cone.
Keely turned her eyes back to Parker and
opened her hands wide and smiled optimistically.
“Hey, I had to sound sure of myself, Park. You
sounded good, too. It was hard enough to get
anything out of that Ayoobi anyway. If we'd
hemmed and hawed around and said, ‘Well, we'll
try,’ or ‘We'll do the best we can,’do you think for a moment we'd ever have talked him out of the thousand-dollar bonus? He probably would've
decided against hiring us at all.” She straightened
her posture and shrugged. “Anyway, it's a start for
us, and,” she smiled, “we'll be eating and paying
next month’s rent.” Suddenly her smile widened
revealing large white teeth. “Look at the bright
side: we're really in business now. This is what you
wanted. This is what you’ve been dreaming of,
having your own private eye business. Besides,
obviously Ayoobi runs quite a few places in the
area. There'll be other greedy employees and
more dishonesty, that's for sure.” She rubbed her
hands together in anticipation and spoke in a more
dreamy voice, “Our first big case. We're really
detectives, at last. You know, when you first started
talking about being a detective, I thought you were
nuts. I mean, I thought of detectives as either
overweight cops or something people play on TV —
but then…little by little, the idea kind of got hold of me, and now I think I'm as big a nut case as you
are.”
“Yeah,” Parker said. He scratched his head,
smiling, thinking about it. “I think you are at that.”
He laughed as they walked along. “Ever since I
was a kid I was into this stuff. I read all the
detective books I could get my hands on —
especially the realistic private-eye stuff. The real
clincher was when I read about François Vidocq —
that came later, by chance.”
“What's a François Vidocq?”
“Hey, he was the world's first private-eye. Man,
his life makes better reading than most detective
novels. He did it all. He was an ex-con. Before he
became a private detective, he founded the French
Sûreté, and to make it even more romantic, once
he started his own private agency all his employees
were his old ex-con buddies, and the real cops
hated his guts because he was always a jump
ahead of them. He was real, that's the neat part.
Not just the figment of some writer's imagination.”
He paused for a moment and then continued, “I
knew then and there that I had to be a private-eye.
That was for me. I know that when you met me,
you had no idea I was on that track, that I was
going to be a detective, that in reality my spatula
would be a cleverly disguised nine millimeter pistol,
and I'd be a man who, in the face of danger, casts
fear aside like a dirty apron as he becomes flinty-eyed ace private detective, Par—”
“Can it, Hall. You were a fry cook when I met
you. Before you became a flinty-eyed detective,
the most dangerous thing your spatula ever did was
spatter grease on your apron.”
Parker smiled, nodding ruefully. “Yeah, I bet I've
scrambled more eggs than the U.S. Army.” He fell
silent, and then after a moment spoke again, “You
know, that bonus Ayoobi was talking about still
sounds pretty iffy, Keelio. I just hope he doesn't try
to renege on his promise.”
Keely looked up at Parker. “We’ll get it,” she
assured him.
When they reached their old Volvo, a slight
young man with a big smile was finishing up his
wash job.
“Anthony,” Parker said, “how many times have I
told you I don’t have the money to pay for wash
jobs. I really don’t.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Parker. I just like to wash
cars. You can catch up with me when you get a
few big cases under your belt.” He bent and
shoved sponges and towels into an empty pail.
Keely smiled. “Well at least you got to finish the
job this time,” she said.
As they drove off, Anthony stood and watched
them with a big smile on his face. “Detectives,” he
murmured.

Chapter Three

There she was! That woman. Corky's blue eyes
narrowed as she stood on the sidewalk in direct
sunlight, half a block from Edie's and brushed at
the strand of straight dark brown hair that always
fell across her eyes. This had to be more than a
coincidence. Had somebody learned that she and
some of her friends met at Edie's almost every day
after their dance class? What difference would that
make? It was not secret. But lately — well today
was the third time exactly since Corky had become
aware of that woman who was standing across the
street in front of the bank.
Corky casually stuck one hand in the hip pocket
of her jeans while her brown eyes carefully
scanned the busy street. At least the sneakylooking
man wasn't with Ms. X today. Corky's sixth
sense assured her that the woman was watching
her. There was just no doubt about that. But why?
Corky tried to ignore the woman's gaze at first, only
thinking her maybe a little strange. But there was
something about the woman, something about the
way Corky could feel the woman's eyes clinging to
her, watching her and studying her. Something
weird is definitely going on here, Corky thought.
Weird and a little bit scary.
The woman appeared to be maybe forty. She
had a kind of shapeless body covered by a
colorless dress, and her face was sad and dry, a
face that complained about the heartless way life
had treated it, the dissolute face of a drinker
maybe. If Corky had not become so conscious of
the woman's stare, Corky would never have given
her a second glance. The thought that she might
be Corky's mother probably would never have
occurred to her. But occur it did.
Right out of the blue. No one could have been
more surprised than Corky herself.
Crazy?
Of course, it was crazy. Corky knew that. She
knew her mother was dead. She had always
known that, and had absolutely no reason in the
world to think otherwise — and besides, even if by
some miraculous intervention by the hand of God
from on high, Corky's mother somehow did turn up
alive, she certainly would not look anything at all
like this woman. Not a chance!
Although Corky never had a picture of her
natural mother to look at, she nevertheless did
have a very clear picture in her mind of what her
mother would look like, must look like. So, this
whole idea was patently crazy from the start. There
was simply no logical reason in the world for Corky
to have got something like that into her young
head, and she spent long fruitless moments
wondering why and how all this had started in the
first place. Yet somehow, crazy or not, there it was
and in the end, when she stopped and really
thought about it — like it or not — it all sort of fit
together in a weird kind of way.
Even while Corky tried to poo-poo the idea on
the one hand, the poo-pooing did not work on the
other hand, and the matter continued to gnaw at
her. In some crazy way or another it all made
sense no matter what Corky tried to tell herself.
She just had a feeling.
When Corky became old enough to understand,
which is to say when she was about ten, her
parents sat her down and carefully and thoughtfully
explained to Corky that she had been adopted.
They made every effort to explain to her that had
they had the luxury of choosing her rather than just
accept whatever baby the Lord might, in His
wisdom, see fit to give them.

Get the entire book at www.etreasurespublishing.com, e-book or print. A portion of all profits go directly to feed a starving writer. (Me.)
Visit my website: www.cmalbrecht.com

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 25.01.2011

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