text: C. M. Albrecht The Albemarle Affair 
   
   
     
   
   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  
   
   
   Publication Date: January 24th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-cmalbrecht