Something his mother said about the little attic brought to mind the crawl space between the roof and the third floor. When they lived there is was were they kept the Christmas stuff. He couldn’t recall what they did with it during the renovations other that add a layer of insulation. Was there anything up there? What about those corners in the basement that never got used?
He cell rang.
“Daniel?” it was Baxter.
“Yes.” He had expected this call, the one in which Curtis explained why the bonus was not ready yet.
“What is your bank branch?”
Daniel gave him the location.
“Perfect. Meet me there in twenty minutes.”
“I’m walking out the door as we speak.” He shut his phone and turned to Sandy. “Call from the bank. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Curtis was there talking with the manager when he arrived.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Curtis said. “I wanted to things do quickly. Mrs. Herrick has everything ready for the transfer. Once you have signed these.”
The first was a contract with Baxter Bits for the $12,000. The second was a contract for the actual series with Quintex, which would require an additional signature.
“This one won’t get fully signed until they’ve decided they want the show. The 12K is yours regardless.” Curtis explained.
Daniel sorted through his various bank cards deciding which account this would into. It wasn’t Depot money, it wasn’t exactly Restorations money either. Nor was it personal. He opted for personal. He would check with Dell and Strong as to where they thought it should go.
The transfer took a few keystrokes to input pin numbers and it was done.
“That was easy.” Curtis said. “But not painless.”
“When do we meet with Quintex?”
“They were waiting for this to be done.” He waved the first contract. “I’m going there now. They will be in contact with you.”
“What about John Kilpatrick?”
“That’s in the hands of lawyers now.” Curtis shrugged. “Not renewing Unsolved for another season was not my decision. I merely passed that news along to him. Which, as you know, he didn’t take well. Speaking of which how is the eye?”
“Recovering as expected.”
“Good. There isn’t much of a make-up budget for the show. None in fact.” Curtis laughed. “Can I buy you a drink? To celebrate.”
“No, thanks. I have a business to run and you have some paper work to deliver I believe.”
Dan dropped into the Carafe when he got back. He looked around for Peter but didn’t see him.
“Hi Jill. The usual for my crew.”
She began to pour the the various ‘usuals.’
“Short handed today?” he asked. “No Peter?”
“He’s looking after his Dad.”
<>
Dan locked the front doors of the Depot. He leaned against the back counter and looked around the shop. The business that his Dad had built, that his sister had helped built and that he had turned into more than a camera shop. A business that apparently had been built on porn. Just like retail on the internet. Without the need for credit card security there would be no PayPal.
There was a knock at the glass doors. It was Inspector Warszawa. He gestured for Warszawa to come to the back as he didn’t want to go through front security again.
“What brings you here this late at night.”
“I was hoping to catch you before you closed. We had a weird break in the old photos case.”
They went up the back stairs to Dan’s office.
“Weird in what way?”
“All the photos are portions of pictures by Albert Block.”
“The western photographer?” Dan said.
“Right. He did those gigantic panoramic things.”
“I know. It took a pack horse just to carry the camera. I never figured out he got up some of those mountains.”
“Not my problem. But all the scenes were small sections of his pictures made to look like somebody’s travel photos.”
“Simple enough to do. But those pictures were real. I mean the ones that were from the sixties were actually from the sixties.”
“Someone couldn’t be using old film stock, period paper to reproduce them like that today?”
“Possibly but there’s a … patina quality to the finish that is from real aging. No chemical can do that.”
“What we’re dealing with then is someone who has a cache of these pictures that was created sometime in the sixties? I don’t get it.”
“Isn’t there anything else that connects these incidents?”
“They seem random. Victoria, Winnipeg, St. John’s. How much more random can you get.”
“Not so random. They’re all provincial capitols.”
“Fuck! I … no one even noticed that. You sure you don’t want to be reinstated?”
“Too late for that. You couldn’t afford me anyway. Trust me.”
<>
Dan arrived at FairVista five minutes before his Lyphend presentation.
“Sorry I’m late.” He said to Linda. “They should call it Troubled Transit out of Commission.”
He demonstrated the medium range camera and the new self-framing option that would suggest a better angle for your shot, and the background damper that would allow your main subject to be in better focus. A feature that could be reversed, if one chose. The travel mug got the usual hum of reaction, particularly when he had the Cuppa’s barista fill it.
He was gratified to see that at least four of the cameras were sold. Sales always put Linda in a good frame of mind.
He had been caught off guard to see that Cuppa’s had been installed so quickly. It looked as if it had always been in that corner of the shop. Three small black marble top tables each with two chairs stood between the espresso bar and the front window. Even the floor had been changed with a non-slip slate tile that was flecked with glitter.
It had been fitted out with a Gaggia that looked like it as out of a space station. Beside it was a smaller single cup machine. There were no paper, Styrofoam coffee cups to be seen. Instead there was a range of ceramic mugs in different size and colors, each with Cuppa’s trademark on one side and ‘Linda James Photos’ on the other.
“The Gaggia is custom made for the location.” Linda said proudly. “Beside it is a Clover. Put’s the Classic to shame.”
“Fast work,” Dan replied. “Considering it was … what less than two months ago you made the agreement.”
“They had their eyes on FairVista for a year or more before they approached us.” She walked to her office.
“By ‘us’ you mean ‘you.’ I knew nothing about this until they happened by the Depot one morning while I just happened to be here.” He followed her.
“I didn’t know they would do that. At that point I thought they were merely making inquiries.”
“Right. Well, speaking of making inquiries, I was in to see Dell and Strong earlier this week.” He sipped from the travel mug and watched to see if she reacted all all.
“Oh?” Her eyes flicked over to Cuppa’s and then back to him. “Another payroll hitch?”
“Why I was there isn’t the point, is it? Very slick. Did Mother know or did you spring it on her as well. No, wait, you made her think I was already on board.”
“You saw the agreement?”
“They showed it to me thinking I already knew about it. Almost put out my other eye. I appeared to have signed it sometime in December of last year.”
“December fifteenth to be exact.” Linda was pinching the skin between her thumb and forefinger. First one hand then the other.
“What … I mean …”
“What I’d like to know is how you got me to sign off on it.”
“Dan, it was laughably easy. You were never one to read every page one it comes to contracts. Top page doesn’t always match the bottom page.”
“Fuck! The projections for next year?”
“Right first time.”
“You realize that makes the contract dubious to say the least. I can imagine what a good lawyer would do with that information.”
“This is between you and me and I’ll never admit this to anyone.”
“You just did.” He sipped his coffee.
Her eyes widened. “You recorded this with the Lyphend!”
“It was laughably easy.” Dan smiled. “If you had come to me to begin with I probably would have been on board. Though when I saw the hasty mess Cuppa’s made on Queen I was shocked to see what they accomplished here.”
“Dan you know how difficult it was to convince you to even open this location.”
“Dad dead. Renovations at the Depot ran over budget and you wonder why.”
“Your workshop ran over budget.”
“A workshop that has since paid for itself. We’re just above the surface here at FairVista.”
“Then you aren’t going to do anything?”
“Dell and Strong are having our accounts gone over by a forensic accounting firm. There better not be any discrepancies.”
“I see.” Linda seemed to sag.
“Is there anything else they might find? The car leasing?”
“No! I didn’t expect you to be so … rational?”
“I’ve had a few days to think. Do I want to damage the James brand over money, deceit and manipulation? The answer is no. But if something more is uncovered I’ll have to rethink. Besides it runs in the family.”
“What runs in the family?”
“Hidden things. Like those sex pics of Dad’s.
“Don’t tell me you don’t have a stash of porn somewhere.”
“I did once upon a time but the stuff I had wasn’t stuff I’d made myself.” The V-Files didn’t count as porn, did they? “Mom was by to see me earlier this week.”
“What! She left her condo! It must have been important. Health?”
“Nothing like that. You told her about those pictures and she wanted to make sure there were no more. She shredded the copies I showed you. Dad’s secret life may have been why we dashed from the east coast.”
No.”
“The RCMP got wind of it and encouraged him to get out of town as it were.”
“Bullshit. We left bec ….” she stopped herself.
“You do know more about this. Christ! I’m not an eleven year old any more. What could be worse than finding out your Dad was some sort of smut peddler.” He stopped himself from talking about the Montreal connection. If she already knew, he wanted her to talk about it, if not, it didn’t matter if she knew, yet.
“I knew the camera club was more than a camera club, if that’s what you’re fishing for. Sometime Dad would let me and some of the other kids I knew join in but there some nights when it was adults only. Said it was because we teens we so unruly.
“One time I snuck back to the store to get a glimpse of what they were doing.”
“And.”
“It was some woman in a two piece bathing suit. Skimpy. That’s all I saw. Nothing like what you showed me but well I wasn’t that surprised to see it went further. At the time I freaked out.”
“When was that?”
“About a year before we moved?”
They walked back down to shop level.
“You sound Daddy when you get serious.” Linda said.
“Then I guess he had reason to distrust you as well.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
TOpoet 