Believing in Rita

By Gregory P Knowles

For her entire life, Rita Strathcote has lived in the same stifling small town, working in and living above the struggling second-hand bookshop that has been her family’s for three generations – and now she’s had enough. What was once a haven has become a prison and the confinement of narrow-minded, small-thinking Brainbridge threatens to overwhelm her.

But Rita and her sophisticated (self-proclaimed) friend Kylie have dreams; big dreams; dreams of travelling to exotic faraway places and a lifestyle usually reserved for the rich and famous. Rita spends hours trawling through National Geographic magazines, planning their life of liberation and self-indulgence.

The only challenge to the fulfilment of their dreams is that Rita’s bookstore hasn’t turned a profit for years. Rita owes a lot of money – a fact Jackson Grant, the puffed-up mortgage manager of the local bank, reminds her off at regular intervals. If Rita is to find freedom, she needs a plan.

The local policeman, Dwayne Kearney, who has doted on her since high school, has long since been discounted as an option – Rita would rather be buried alive than marry a local man and settle down to the mundanity of Bainbridge life.

That’s when Carl Delamore arrives in town. Scruffy and crass he may be; he is also a man of apparent wealth. Rita hatches an audacious plan to befriend Carl and secure the finances she needs to buy her freedom.

The idea is quite ridiculous, implausible even, but Rita quickly becomes convinced of its worth. Her plotting becomes an obsession that reveals a dark side of Rita; a side Rita herself didn’t know existed.

Alienated from her friend, Rita blunders on, finding herself the cause of a suicide, an attempted murder, and the death of the one person who truly loved her.

Through it all Rita discovers, sometimes you gotta lose everything to find out what you really want.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gregory P Knowles
• Release date: Nov 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370538386

Gregory P Knowles

Gregory P Knowles is a freelance writer from the bottom end of our planet - Auckland, New Zealand. As most authors will be aware, a freelance writer is a person who gets paid, per word, per article or perhaps! So, to cover the cost of his mortgage and purchase luxuries, such as food, Greg works as a technical writer and web-content writer, squeezing in the more creative stuff when he gets a spare moment.Greg's first book, Fruit of the Spirit, a collection of short stories, was published in 2014.His first full length novel, Believing in Rita, was published in 2016.Be sure to look out for Seven Deadly Sins, Greg's next collection of short stories, due out soon.

Book preview

I

Nobody really liked Carl Delamore. To describe him as crass or unrefined would be to state the blatantly obvious. Not that he meant to cause offence. His crudeness was the by-product of an overdeveloped streak of self-centredness that, even in Carl’s most sensitive moments, spilt over uncontrollably, poisoning everything he said and did.

He did possess certain sought-after skills, however. Over a decade of employment with the Tax Department, meant Carl had amassed an in-depth knowledge of every tax-dodge and scam there was going. He’d still be a government employee today were it not that one of his more obvious scams, that of covertly supplying women’s magazines with details of celebrity earnings, had been detected and exposed. That discovery brought instant dismissal; a move Carl preferred to think of as an opportunity for a mid-career adjustment.

His wife saw things differently. On hearing the news she muttered something about a straw and a camel’s back. Within moments, Carl’s mid-life adjustment had become the catalyst for a complete lifestyle change for them both.

The marriage had been shaky for a while and this sudden transition to unemployment persuaded Carl’s wife to finally make good on her frequent threats to leave him, or more precisely, to insist that he leave her.

Within hours, an expensive lawyer had been engaged. With the tenacity only a man paid by the hour can muster, he worked diligently to secure a hefty alimony settlement for Carl’s wife and on-going support payments for their two children.

But, for all his faults, Carl’s no quitter. On the day of the Family Court decision he made mention to those assembled of his intentions to leave for a smaller town and set up in business as a taxation consultant. To those assembled in the courtroom, he unveiled a noble scheme; by sacrificially placing all profits from this new venture into a family trust, he’d ensure the ongoing support of his children and their education.

It sounded so altruistic that even his long-suffering wife felt a twinge of guilt that left her with a nagging doubt that perhaps her judgement of Carl had been a little hasty.

Indeed, she had not. While the judge was being duped into making a lenient decision with regard to the splitting of family assets, Carl was smug in the knowledge that he’d already transferred most of his cash to various bank accounts into which he planned to surreptitiously deposit the bulk of his future income. The family trust would remain forever in limbo.

Carl walked from court a relieved man and, winding down over solitary drinks in an inner-city bar, smiled contentedly, and lifted his glass to himself. Carpe diem, was his toast. The very next day he left for his new life in the small mid-west town of Bainbridge.

The townsfolk of Bainbridge greeted him with enthusiasm at first. Before his arrival they’d known nothing of the tax loopholes and rebates which, for Carl, were second nature. Now, almost half a decade later, a steady stream of clients made their way into his office; a converted shop, forever in a state of disarray, with folders stacked in piles around the floor and a desk littered with anonymous pieces of paper, some containing phone numbers, others hurriedly scribbled calculations. The windows were shielded by net curtains browned by passively infused cigarette smoke and there was a sign proclaiming in tawdry gold stick-on lettering, Delamore Taxation Consultants.

Today it was Rita Strathcote’s turn to sit amongst the clutter and Carl was at his arrogant best. Throwing the Strathcote Traders folder down on his desk, he spoke as professionally as he could, Last year your business brought in just fifteen thousand dollars and paid five thousand straight back in tax.

Rita stared back blankly. She hated him knowing that. In this day and age, while religion, sex and politics were all open to frank discussion, personal finances remained taboo. But then Carl had never been known for his subtlety.

This was a big part of what the people of Bainbridge had grown to dislike about him. It wasn’t just what Carl knew their financial secrets. It was the air of superiority with which he carried them. All the while assuring everyone that Delamore Taxation Consultants was the bastion of confidentiality and yet giving the impression he could, and would, divulge client fiscal inadequacies to anyone, at any time.

Carl’s chair let out a squeal as he leaned back and swung his feet around, dropping them heavily on the desk, hands behind his head. He took a long drag on his cigarette before forcing a jet of smoke from the corner of his mouth.

‘It’s all a bit of a mess. Can’t live long on that. Outgoings greater than incomings. You’re in dire straits for sure.’

‘I’m well aware of that,’ snapped Rita. She was a little different to most other Bainbridge residents. While they merely disliked Carl or, at best, treated him with indifference, Rita found him, with his grimy office, smutty humour and lecherous eyes, totally loathsome. Like most of Carl’s clients, she was here out of necessity and had entered the office intent on maintaining an air of nonchalance regarding her financial situation, but it was impossible to hide anything from Carl. As the meeting drew on she felt her pulse rate rising and an increasing sense of desperation grabbing at her, involuntarily nudging her ever closer to the edge of her chair.

Eventually, leaning forward and attempting to hide the tremor in her voice, she pleaded with Carl, ‘The reason I came here was to see if you could find a way out of this mess.’

Looking into the eyes of despair gave Carl a certain morbid enjoyment. ‘Leave it to me, Ms Strathcote,’ he said. ‘I just might be able to work something out.’ And, flicking open his diary, he ran a nicotine stained finger down the page. ‘Yes, I’ll be able to start work on it immediately. Give me a few days will you?’

There was that superior air again. When they met in the street he always called her Rita, but in his office it was, Ms Strathcote. Still, at least his self-confidence instilled a small measure of hope in Rita, or perhaps it was more a feeling of relief from being able to leave her troubles sitting on somebody else’s desk.

‘I’ll wait for you to contact me then.’ Reaching the door, Rita looked back to discover that Carl had already pushed her file to join the clutter at the edge of his desk in favour of the morning newspaper.



Rita had grown up in Bainbridge. Not that that ensured popularity. If Bainbridge High School had awarded a prize for ‘Most Likely to Slowly Fade Into Obscurity,’ Rita would have won it hands down. At 32 years old, her entire life had been spent behind the counter of Strathcote Traders filling the space that was once her mother’s and before that her grandmother’s.

If she was honest, Rita would have to admit she still had a lot of the same stock; second-hand books, old and musty, haphazardly catalogued and arranged on tired sagging shelves; magazines piled precariously around the floor, or stuffed into cardboard boxes, split at the sides and slowly disintegrating; vinyl records, popular in the ‘70s, but now of interest only to the serious or slightly obsessive collector; even some 78s. CDs, videos and DVDs were crammed into a rack to the side of the counter and above them sat a display of what Rita called collectibles. In reality they were mostly worthless stamps and coins.

Of course, she knew she’d never make a living from any of this. The real money was made out back in a dimly lit area separated from the rest of the shop by a tatty net curtain. There Rita kept an assortment of books, magazines and DVDs deemed too ‘adult’ to put on public display. Her mother had once been fined for selling them. Never put the old lady off though. She knew the bottom-line as well as Rita did. There was no money in twenty year old sporting almanacs or outdated university textbooks. If they were to survive they needed to serve a clientele with a taste for something rather more sensual.

Rita had more than a few childhood recollections of being shooed off to the upstairs flat when the local constable called.

‘Now then, Mrs Strathcote,’ he’d say, with a broad somewhere-from-England accent, ‘we both know this is just not right.’

Rita’s mother was never one to mince her words. In no uncertain terms, she’d tell him to push off. She even struck him once; a quick slap across the face with the back of her hand when his tone became a little too condescending. That time she’d been arrested. The charges were, distributing pornography and the obstruction of a police officer in the execution of his duty. She went to court and, much to the policeman’s delight, was fined $500.

It was the last Bainbridge arrest that officer ever made.

To the same degree that Rita was anonymous, her mother was known and respected—Bainbridge born and bred. The arresting officer was a newcomer—a foreigner. Shortly after the court case, life became unbearable for him. A transfer was arranged and he was exiled to a location locals neither knew nor cared about.

On her mother’s death several years prior, the shop became Rita’s and it’s here that she works five and a half days a week while continuing to live in the small flat above it. These days it’s difficult for her to accept that there’d been a time when the prospect of stepping into her mother’s shoes had filled her with keen anticipation. As a child, she’d while away hour after hour balanced on a chair behind the counter, taking play-money from imaginary customers, storing it in an old cake tin that doubled as a cash register. Back then the damp, rank smell of decaying books and magazines created a perfume of familiarity and security that was, for her, home. Now the game had become tiresome and she found everything about the store stifling and constraining.

On dull days, the shop was especially gloomy. The walls, stacked high with their hefty cargo of books and magazines, seemed to close in and imprison her while the silence screamed at her menacingly.

On fine sunny days, the sunlight would stream in the front window, its rays broken only by the flickering shadows of traffic passing by outside. The gentle hum of each passing motor would call out to Rita, tormenting her with a mocking reminder of her confinement in small-thinking, small-town Bainbridge.

Against one of the walls halfway down the shop, on a bookshelf next to the stairs that led to the upstairs apartment, stood Rita’s pride and joy—a complete collection of National Geographic magazines, right from the very first edition in 1955. In 1985, Rita’s mother had given her a subscription for her tenth birthday and Rita had ensured it never lapsed.

Gathering the back copies had been a challenge tackled with relish. For several years, Rita’s days were made bearable by the anticipation of someone coming in with a missing edition. Bearers of the familiar gold covers would be pounced upon, greeted warmly, and then ushered back out of the shop as quickly as seemed polite so Rita could rummage through the magazines. She still remembered clearly the momentary disbelief and ensuing elation when, at the bottom of a carton of otherwise valueless books, she uncovered April 1956—the edition that completed her collection.

Although that elation had long since faded, there remained tremendous solace in those Geographic shelves. Hence the Not For Sale sign pinned above them. National Geographic’s available for purchase were scattered in valueless, jumbled piles around the shop floor; the magazines on these shelves were, in Rita’s mind, priceless.

Rita would balk at any suggestion she was obsessed but the gold magazines, with their bright cover photographs and glossy articles, comforted her like chocolate might a compulsive eater, or a cigarette a smoker. When business was slack or she was feeling especially imprisoned by the narrowness and seemingly pointless nature of her life, Rita would transport herself through time and space by randomly selecting a magazine from the shelves and fanning through the pages. Here her escape was complete. She would picture herself superimposed on each of the colourful images. There was Rita Strathcote; strolling along des Champs Elysées, sipping coffee in a New York café, riding a camel in the Gobi desert, or lying bikini-clad on the white sands of some remote South Pacific isle.

As far as actual travel was concerned, Rita was, at best, a novice. The highpoint of her travels so far was a college history trip when she and her excited classmates had bussed 30 kilometres to visit the early settler museum in Monroe City.

Years of daydreaming and magazine travel had filled Rita with a yearning, however. She found herself driven by a deep-seated belief that one day she’d escape the constraints of this dingy shop and stifling busybody town with its prying busybody people. Then, in her newly liberated state, she’d be free to visit some of the places she read about.

Rita climbed a stepladder to arrange some books on the top shelf of the Military/War section. Fifteen thousand in, five thousand straight back out! she repeated over and over. She knew things were bleak. She also knew things would be bleaker still when Jackson Grant turned up. It was the end of the month. He always came at the end of the month.

‘Fifteen thousand in, five thousand straight back out.’ Her voice, though a whisper, grew in intensity and her actions became more vigorous with each repetition of Carl Delamore’s words.

‘Fifteen thousand in, five thousand straight back out.’



Almost everybody liked Dwayne Kearney. Also Bainbridge born and bred, he was the same age as Rita—they’d gone to school together. He insisted people call him Patch saying it went with his job. Local policeman—Patch; Like a policeman has a patch to patrol and a patch on his shirt sleeve, he’d explain with a childish giggle. He thought it clever and everyone obliged with the self-inflicted nickname, except Rita. She took strange delight in calling him Dwayne; DeeWayne to be precise. She knew he hated it. Every time she said it he’d hook his thumbs into his belt and push down, puffing his chest out as he did, fighting to find the words that would restore some dignity while trying desperately to hide the awkwardness that enveloped him whenever he was near Rita.

‘Hey, DeeWayne,’ Rita said when she heard the shop buzzer. She didn’t bother looking around. Never had to for Patch. His lumbering walk was such that the buzzer sounded for twice as long as it did for anyone else. And he was so big that, when his bulk filled the doorway, the light in the shop would dim as his frame momentarily eclipsed the sun shining in from the street.

The leather of his belt gave the familiar squeak as he thrust his thumbs into it and puffed his chest out. ‘Rita,’ came the staccato greeting.

He’d always been nervous around her. Even back in their school days Patch had found any attempt to converse with Rita left him crimson-faced and tongue-tied. Once, at a high-school disco, he’d summoned the courage to request a dance. He was almost crimson with embarrassment when he asked and purple with humiliation when she refused.

Truth be told, Rita didn’t exactly dislike Patch. It was just that she found it difficult to feel anything overly positive towards someone who unwittingly represented everything she found so constricting within Bainbridge. The movement of time and the challenge to maturity had bypassed Patch leaving him untouched. He still lived with his mother, still hung out with his old high-school buddies, still walked through town as if this was the centre of the universe—and for Patch, it was.

Perhaps Patch’s one redeeming feature was that he turned a blind eye to the illicit material in the back room. Although, being a regular customer, he really had no choice.

‘You’re going to have to pay from now on,’ Rita said, remaining two steps up the ladder so she could look Patch in the eye.

‘Pay? For what?’

‘Your books. Your DVDs. I’m just about broke and you’re one of my best customers. In fact, you’re about my only customer. Everyone else uses the internet now.’

‘You have got to be joking.’ Patch looked at her in disbelief. He believed every job had to have and perk or two and this was one of his. Besides, he’d told Rita, and had long since convinced himself, that it was a necessary part of law enforcement. Research, he called it. Keeping up with the play as regards what the crim’s are into.

‘It’s no joke. You’re going to have to pay.’

‘But you know I only watch that rubbish because I need to understand the minds of those perverts and child molesters out there.’ Patch gave a sideways jerk with his head indicating that by out there he meant Newcombe Road, the stretch of main-street running by Rita’s shop, where every day was much the same as the one before and nothing seriously criminal ever happened.

‘Then claim it back from petty cash or something. You might even be able to get a tax rebate. Legitimate expense and all that.’ She paused, ‘Maybe Delamore can help.’

Patch froze. He despised Carl Delamore. Fancy being paid for sitting around all day helping people to outwit the tax department. It was tax evasion as far as he was concerned, which in Patch’s eyes, made Delamore a thief and a crook.

‘Undercover work!’ He blurted out, expecting he might somehow impress her.

Rita nodded and repeated his words slowly, ‘Oh, undercover work.’

Anyone else would have recognised the sarcasm, but not Patch. Sensing Rita was impressed, he said it again, more deliberate this time, ‘Yeah, undercover work. Can’t claim back expenses, it could blow my cover.’

‘Well, one way or another you’re still going to have to pay.’

‘Okay.’ Patch stepped away from the ladder. ‘But I want a discount.’

Rita said nothing and Patch began to fidget under her stare, unsure how to end their conversation until a squeal of tyres outside gave him the opportunity he was looking for.

‘What the…’ he exclaimed, striding to the door. He squinted down the road and into the distance before turning and giving a quick informal salute. Then he was gone, leaving Rita alone and bemused. How any man could seriously believe it was possible to go undercover in a place where he was half the entire police force and everyone knew each other was beyond her.



People openly despised Jackson Grant and that was the way he liked it. He’d neither the desire nor any obvious need for conventional friendships. For Grant what little self-image and satisfaction he possessed in life came from his ability to alter the lives of others simply by the signing of his name.

Grant arrived on the dot of five. Rita hated these visits. It was Friday afternoon and, with everyone on their way home from work for the weekend, now through until closing at eight was usually her most lucrative time of the week.

‘Ahh, Miss Strathcote. I was just passing by on my way home and thought I might poke my head in.’

Jackson Grant reminded Rita of a character from one of those English television comedies. He wore a dark suit and carried both a briefcase and an umbrella. It seldom rained around here but he was the type who wanted to be prepared for every eventuality. Those who were better acquainted with him than Rita, were aware that his briefcase carried very little in the way of business materials. There was instead; a Swiss Army knife, because one never knew when one might need to answer some emergency, a needle and thread, a staple gun, assorted breath fresheners, toothpaste and toothbrush, string, tape, a disposable camera (in case of the need to record an accident or disaster for legal or insurance purposes), and several other miscellaneous items, all testimony to the pedantic nature that so annoyed those who knew Jackson Grant.

In one sense Jackson Grant was everything Carl Delamore wasn’t. He was well groomed, always neat, always in control. The only thing the two men shared, besides one of those swept-over hairdos ridiculed by most but seemingly treasured by balding men in their middle years, was that irksome superior air.

‘Why, Mr Jackson Grant. I’m afraid I really haven’t the time to stop and chat. This is my busiest time of the week you know.’ While realising she had to be careful not to overstep the mark, Grant did after all have control over her rather substantial mortgage, Rita found it impossible to show him any civility.

‘Miss Strathcote, according to our official bank records it would appear your mortgage payments are once again, shall we say, somewhat in arrears.’

‘I thought you were just poking your head in.’ Rita leaned on her elbows across the counter with her chin in her hands and teased, ‘Why spoil a friendly chat by bringing up mundane bank business?’

‘My manager,’ he continued, with that rather superior air, ‘considers your debt to the bank to be far from mundane and has suggested I put to you a proposal.’

‘You mean a threat?’

‘Certainly not! My bank is not in the habit of issuing threats of any kind. This is merely a suggestion. A business proposition, if you like. We will give you until the twentieth of next month to repay the seventy-five thousand dollars you owe us, or this place gets sold in lieu of expenses.’

‘And what if I refuse to sell?’

Jackson Grant felt a tinge of excitement. He lived for this sort of banter; desperate mortgagors scrambling for excuses and apologies, throwing out impossible promises and frantic guarantees, versus the might