The Linden Affair

By Paul Swanson

Murder, adventure, a fiery new relationship, intrigue, and this new case involving a missing twelve million dollars is what David Clarke finds interesting in his new job as an apprentice to Harry Dunlop, a private investigator he meets by accident in a little diner. He finds all this and much more when Harry has him follow a case to the middle of nowhere, the small town of Linden, New Hampshire, where he finds far more on those country roads than he ever found on the streets of Boston.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312477384

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The Linden Affair - A David Clarke Mystery

Copyright 2014, Paul George Swanson, All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-312-47738-4

Reproduction, in whole or in part by any means, excepting quotes used exclusively in reviews, is prohibited without written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities between any character in this work to any actual person is not intended and is completely circumstantial.

The Linden Affair - a David Clarke mystery.

Written with particular appreciation of my wife, Mona Rae, who provided invaluable help in proofing and editing, and also provided the inspiration for particular scenes portrayed herein.

1.Career Decisions.

I carried the briefcase I had recently recovered, completing the case, up the wide stairway and down the hall to the door marked Harry Dunlop – Private Investigator. Before I could have a door marked David Clarke – Private Investigator I would need at least two more years as an apprentice to a licensed investigator. My job now was as an apprentice to Harry, but the end of this case may very well mark the end of my job.

According to the information on this case, what was in the briefcase I recovered was worth twelve million dollars, and a lot of people were looking to own it, and a few people had died over it. I had chased the briefcase to the middle of nowhere and back, and was now handing it over to Harry, who was one of the people I suspected to be among those looking at it as their retirement package. If he did, it would definitely leave me looking for a new job.

Even if it wasn’t what Harry was planning, his client, a man named Bret, also not the rightful owner of the contents, was definitely looking for his retirement inside that briefcase. I was glad that I had put an alternate plan in effect, but it had taken some very careful planning, and required a partner.

I turned the briefcase in to Harry, who was all smiles as he took it, and he handed me an envelope containing a bonus for completing the case, telling me I had earned the next week off. He usually did supply a cash bonus for solving a case, as well as some time off, but this one appeared significantly larger than most. I didn’t look in the envelope before leaving him to his work.

As I walked out of his inner office, I heard footsteps in the hallway outside, approaching the office. I had no doubt at all this would be Bret, although I had no idea how he knew I had just turned the briefcase in to Harry. Bret was one person I definitely did not want to run into. I decided to hide, which wasn’t particularly difficult in Harry’s office.

His office wouldn’t win any design awards. On every surface in the office that would hold them, including the floor, were stacks of file folders and loose papers. There was only one clear area, which was the path from the door allowing entrance from the hallway, through the outer office, then into the inner office to the front of Harry’s desk. I was, at the time, in the outer office, which contained only a secretary’s desk and chair and a pair of file cabinets. With all of the piles of folders and papers, I had always doubted there was actually anything inside the cabinets, but the piles covering the top were enough to fill them several times over.

With the height of the piles on top of the desk, hiding behind the desk was the easiest spot, so I crouched down there, just as Bret walked in the door. He wove his way along the path between the piles, right up to Harry’s desk.

Bret, I wasn’t expecting you, Harry remarked. I just got the briefcase and haven’t had the time to wrap up everything on this case yet. I can give you a call…

That won’t be necessary, Bret interrupted. I’ll just take the briefcase now.

It was obvious that Bret didn’t want to chance anything else going wrong. Harry knew exactly what it was Bret was actually looking for. It was obvious to me, although I didn’t actually see him do it, Harry had already removed the item, and Bret made it quite obvious right after Harry handed him the briefcase.

Where’s the rest of it? He demanded.

Harry acted like he had no idea what he was talking about, claiming he had already told Bret the papers were missing. Bret was getting quite impatient, claiming Harry knew exactly what he was talking about. They argued for a short time, then I heard something that sounded like a loud popping noise. Bret, a very short time afterwards, walked hurriedly out of the office. When I was certain he had left, I slowly extracted myself from my hiding place.

It didn’t take me long to verify that the popping noise was exactly what I had suspected. It was from a .22 caliber pistol, very effective at close range, but not really very loud. The hole it left was in the center of Harry’s forehead as he lay back in his chair. This marked the end of my career as far as I could tell, but I had something that more than made up for it.

I already had what Bret was really looking for.

That incident verified that I had truly found an exciting career. What led to it began only about a year before after nine years of my hunting around and going from job to job looking for a career interesting enough for me to pursue. I definitely found that, but it was obvious that my next problem to solve would be one that concerned job security.

Job security wasn’t even something I was considering that seriously the day I found that job. I had just quit by last job, one that I saw as being almost, but not quite, as interesting as watching paint dry. I decided that looking around again, since I at least had some money set aside, was about the right thing to do.

My optimism at finding another career was at an all-time low. I had run out of ideas, and was just wandering the streets of Boston seeing if anything there would give me any hints. I was surrounded by people rushing around, all seeming like they had somewhere really important to go, but I have had those jobs. Most of those people were running around on tasks that someone else wanted them to do, usually to get them out of the office for a while.

There were other things crossing my mind at the time as well, all doing their best at telling me how badly I had been doing. My father was the one who was always telling me I needed to find a career I could be happy with, pointing out that, on the average day, I spent eight hours sleeping, leaving sixteen. Half of those were spent working. If I wasn’t happy with my job, not only would those eight be miserable, but that would reflect on the remaining eight, which should be mine. His solution was to find something I liked, just making sure there was a reasonable amount of money involved, instead of looking at just the money.

My mother’s approach was different. She was apparently more interested in the eight hours that remained, and was concerned that I wasn’t finding someone to settle down with. I certainly wasn’t, I would have to agree. I had been dating once in a while, but really hadn’t found anyone I figured I could live with for more than maybe a whole month, in fact with most of the ones I had met, more than one day in a row would be a little difficult. I hadn’t yet seen how I could find anyone that I could possibly be with for the rest of my life. She just kept telling me I was looking in the wrong places.

At that point I was once again walking the streets of Boston looking for another, hopefully more interesting, job. This time I didn’t have a clue what type of job I really wanted to try. I also didn’t have a steady girlfriend. I didn’t even have a car. I had an apartment. After nine years of looking for a decent career, that was about all I had.

The weather agreed with my mood, and was a common type of weather in Boston in mid-May. It was overcast and threatening to rain. It wasn’t actually raining. On the other hand, it also wasn’t exactly not raining either. It was drizzling, which meant everything and everybody was damp, making it feel colder than it really was. In addition to being cold and wet, I decided that I was also hungry, and it was about time for lunch. I was about to walk in to the most significant lunch I would ever have, although there was no way for me to know that at the time.

I found a small restaurant that looked like it was in my price range. As I walked in I noted the several tables in it were all occupied, but there were still a few stools at the counter, so I commandeered one of them. The waitress, who looked like someone who may have just retired from her career as a professional wrestler, sumo wrestler trainer or something along that line, approached me asking if I wanted a coffee.

Wondering if she had intended to take me out if I said no, I was happy to realize that I really did want a coffee, so I gave her a yes. As she poured the coffee, she assaulted me with another question, which was and?

I tried keeping it simple, to be sure that she understood the first time so that there was no challenge. I wasn’t really up for much of anything challenging at the moment, but her appearance was one that I saw as potentially threatening, which amplified that desire somewhat. I ordered a hamburger. She heard me the first time, and stormed back to the kitchen to relay that order to the cook.

The restaurant was small and noisy, but it was at least well lit and dry, giving it two advantages over what was outside. Looking around I found nothing that would help me in selecting a career for myself. It was the normal lunch hour, which was actually a mistake on my part. I was just looking around for what to do for work. I didn’t need to be back anywhere at or before one o’clock or any other specific time. Why hadn’t I just waited until around 1:30 or so, when all these people would be back at work?

There certainly were no people in there that I could get any information from on ideas about jobs. These were the paper-pushers, and had to be back at their desks by one because there was someone there holding a stopwatch. The jobs they had were definitely not on my list of interesting ones to find.

Attila the Waitress came back soon with my hamburger. It was in the center of the plate, with two pickle chips on the side, and little pieces of potato chips littered around as if someone threw a handful of them at my plate and let them land wherever they fell. I extracted the pickle chips, picking off the potato chip pieces, and devoured them first. Next I carefully wiped the chips off the hamburger bun back on to the plate so that I could pick that up and proceed with my lunch.

As I feasted on my elegant meal, a tall, thin man, maybe about five foot eleven, approached the counter and planted himself in the stool next to mine. His hair was all trimmed to the same length, which was only about three eights of an inch, and his five o’clock shadow seemed to refer to five o’clock a few days ago, so it was almost the same length.

He was wearing a suit, but it had enough wrinkles per square inch to put the average raisin to shame. The tie was definitely one that should have been passed over at a super-discount table. Still, there was something a little inconsistent with his appearance. His manner seemed more refined than what his clothes seemed to indicate, and he didn’t have any other signs. For example, his hands didn’t shake as they would have if they were indicating an alcohol problem. I wasn’t overcome by any odor that would have revealed the lack of proper bathing. All that was explained in what he did next.

He rummaged around through just about every pocket he had, and finally found what he wanted. He extracted a photograph, almost as wrinkled as his suit, looked at it, then held it over so that I could see it. The photograph was of a young woman, perhaps in her early 20s, with long, medium brown hair parted in the center. Her blue eyes seemed to twinkle, matching the friendly, inviting smile. He asked if I had seen her recently.

It was a very attractive young woman, so I’m sure I would have noticed if I had. Unfortunately, I hadn’t, and told him so. He put the picture back in one of his pockets, undoubtedly not remembering which one so that he could rummage through all of them again next time he wanted to present it to someone.

He then announced himself to me as Harry Dunlop, a private investigator. His case was apparently to locate the woman in the photograph, since he referred to it as a missing person case.

While I was walking around that morning, private investigator was one of the topics I had entertained. Particularly in my early high school days, it was hard to get me away from that television set when there was anything on that concerned a private eye. I was always right there, trying to outguess the sleuth, seeing if I could figure out the answer, in spite of the fact that they always gave you less than the information you would really need to do so, before the final commercial had finished. My hit rate really wasn’t all that bad. I actually did figure out some of them. Of course, my success was far better on the reruns.

I no longer watched much television, so that addiction had subsided somewhat. Most of what I use the television for now was to find out what the best guess was for the next day’s weather, and to find out what there was for news that might be of some interest. Very rarely would I watch a movie, but when I did, my first choice usually was one that featured a private investigator or a detective or something else along the same lines. Since it would be something that could interest me I figured that it wouldn’t hurt much to talk to this man sitting next to me.

Telling him that I had been thinking about becoming a private investigator didn’t seem to solicit much of a response. I added that I was looking for information on what it was actually like to do that work, which seemed to spur a little attention.

Long hours, short pay, and watching for something to happen that you don’t really care about, he informed me. That sounds interesting to you, does it?

Well, I thought it did, I admitted. How do you become a private investigator, anyway?

First you need to figure out if you really want to be one, he began. Ask yourself if you really like following people around just to see if they’re cheating on their spouses. That seems to be the biggest demand. It seems like people cheat on their spouses mainly so that private investigators can stay in business. Once in a while you do get another type of case, like trying to find out if someone is trying to cheat the insurance company on some claim. The case I am on today is different. This is the rare missing person case.

His level of optimism was not exactly what I was hoping for, but I decided to keep pursuing it. If I don’t mind putting up with all that, I continued, then what does it take from there?

Three years, he revealed. "In Massachusetts, you need to apprentice for a licensed private investigator for three years. After that they let you apply for your own license.

Three years isn’t so bad, I concluded.

In that case, he offered, I could use some help. There seems to be a run right now on misdirected spouses and I don’t have anywhere nearly enough time to track them all down. I can put you on as an apprentice for a while if you want to give it a shot to see if this really is what you want.

The offer really surprised me. After already deciding that I wanted to take him up on it, I figured a few questions would be in order. I asked him, so what would be the deal?

What, pay and all that? He questioned. It would be rotten pay and long and strange hours. The plus side is you work pretty much independently, and I’ll give you a bonus if you do a good job on a case, plus a little time off. I’ll be here at eight tomorrow morning. He handed me his business card.

I took his business card, and from that point until I went to sleep, I kept wondering if I was really going to take this seriously. Harry did have a point. While being a private investigator looked great in the television shows and movies, actually working as one, following wayward spouses around all day, could well be as interesting as some of these other jobs. Every time I thought that through it looked like a bad idea, and I should look for a more normal job. I should at least find one that had something a little better than rotten pay.

Shortly before eight the next morning I was wandering around looking for that address. It was apparently on a forgotten block of buildings somewhere between Chinatown and the financial district, one that I had never frequented. I located the building and it appeared to have been overlooked by the city the last time they were looking for buildings to condemn. I walked in the front door and looked around.

There was a security desk there, but it was unoccupied. On closer inspection it looked like it had been unoccupied for quite some time. In fact, there was little evidence that there was any security in the building. It didn’t appear to be getting much in the way of regular maintenance, either. It had an elevator, but I didn’t trust how much maintenance it might have gotten lately either, so I looked around for the stairs. According to the building directory, Harry’s office was only one floor up, so stairs were actually a better choice as far as I was concerned. It was a wide staircase that went up halfway, turned around and went up the rest of the way to a hallway on the second floor.

It wasn’t hard to find Harry’s office. Not far down the hall, on the left, was a door with a frosted glass window, lettered Harry Dunlop – Private Investigator, plus a big number 12 above it on the glass, which was enough to verify I had found the right place. I opened the door and entered.

This was my first view of Harry’s office. I was taken back a little by all the file folders and papers piled all over everything, wondering how it would even be possible for anyone to find anything in that. At the time I remember thinking that, as well hidden as the desk, chair and file cabinets were, perhaps there was a secretary there somewhere, too, but I never found one.

I made my way along the one clear area, that winding little path where the floor was visible. It led me to the door to the inner office, which also had frosted glass but nothing written on that one. With no other doors visible, I figure that had to be the right one and I opened it.

Amid all the piles of file folders and papers, I saw Harry sitting behind his desk reading something in one of the folders. I announced, Hello, Harry, I’m David Clarke. We met in the restaurant and you offered to put me on as an apprentice. There was no response at all. He continued reading.

When he had finished reading, he simply handed me the folder, telling me it was my first case. He told me it looked pretty simple and straightforward, and looked like a good one for me to get my feet wet.

My first thought was that he seemed to have a problem discerning between getting my feet wet and jumping in feet first, but he at least offered me some interesting advice. He told me something I probably would never forget, particularly after I saw how the advice could be used to help out. He told me to look first at the obvious, which was what most people normally ignore. Being able to see the obvious, he explained, would make me good at being a private investigator.

Applying this suggestion was not as easy as it sounded. In this case he pointed out, at least to him, it was obvious the man would not be getting up out of bed, leaving his wife, at three in the morning to go out to have this fancy, clandestine meeting with some strange and mysterious woman. Those things, he insisted, happen only in movies. If this man was cheating, chances would be it would happen during his lunch hour or on some day when he left work a little early and arrived home a little late. What made it obvious was simple. His wife never claimed he was missing during the night.

After he had me fill out a few necessary forms, like a W-4, he sent me on my way, wishing me luck, telling me to come back when I solved the case, with some pictures of them hugging or kissing or something, or if I needed help with it. I was on my own until then.

At the time I was a little excited, yet a little disappointed. I was on my own, and needed to find out if this man had a woman on the side. I had my first case. On the other hand, I was not going to be working with a real private investigator on it, learning from his little box of tricks helping me become successful. He wanted me to figure it out pretty much all on my own.

The folder contained only a picture of the man I was to follow and a paper containing addresses and a description of where he worked and what he did there. I went around and looked up the address of his home and of his office, finishing that up just before lunch. I was near his office at lunch and watched him walk out of the building. Having no idea of anything else I could possibly do, I followed him, trying as best I could to keep a safe distance so he wouldn’t know I was doing that.

The case was even simpler than Harry seemed to think. The man went to an apartment building. When he walked into the entryway and hit one of the doorbells, I could see from the street a woman in an apartment on the second floor walk over toward her door. The man then went through the second door in the entrance and I soon saw him appear in her apartment.

Luckily, I had a camera and had brought it with me. Right then I took pictures of her very warm greeting for the man. Immediately after that greeting, they both disappeared into another room which was not in sight of the street. I checked the pictures I had taken and they seemed to tell the story pretty well. If I understood Harry correctly, I had just finished what he wanted me to do, and the whole case only took me about four hours. I returned to his office.

Harry greeted me, expecting questions. Instead, I pulled out my camera and showed him the pictures. He took the memory card from my camera, then extracted a laptop computer from among the piles of folders and papers on his desk. He read the appropriate pictures from my memory card into the computer and zoomed in on the couple. The smile on his face told me I had done exactly what he had wanted. Commenting on how fast that was, he handed me a $100 bill, calling it my bonus, and told me I earned tomorrow off. I was to report to him in the morning the day after that. He also warned me that most cases weren’t quite that simple.

That was it for my first case. I felt like I hardly started on it and it was already over. I took the $100 bill and the day and a half I actually had off and left, not really feeling like I had a job yet, but knowing that I actually did. It was somewhat of a strange feeling. Now I had a day and a half with nothing at all to do instead of having the task of finding a job.

I made an attempt to do a little research to see if I could figure out what I was really in for, but didn’t get all that far with it. Every time I tried some method of searching, I either found the legal definitions of what was included in the title of private investigator, or places offering courses that you could take to become one. That was, of course, after excluding all of the places I could buy stories that included private investigators and the different sites promising to teach you how to write such stories.

This career would certainly be different if this was how it went. I was considering what I would be able to do with all the spare time that it seemed that I would be having. I had quite a few things in mind, like I had always wanted to learn more about photography, at least to the point where the pictures I had taken would at least look somewhat more like real photographs instead of something that was taken randomly as I passed by. Maybe I could even take a vacation sometime and actually go somewhere on it instead of hanging around here with nothing to do.

I had been looking for a job, off and on, for such a long time that I bought a newspaper and separated out the classifieds before I even thought about not really needing to look through them any more. Although it wasn’t certain