Every Day is Monday (Serial Story) - Part 2

I realize going over the first scene, I never gave our narrator a name.  I went with Sam, and I've updated the first scene to include a name drop early in it. You'll want to read that before you read this, but things start ramping up here.

“Do you think you can get your paws on the police report?” I asked Jonas. After spending an hour reading up on the murder, I went into the office where the rat was already hard at work.

That rat mused for a moment. “Well, it would take pulling a lot of strings in order to call in that favor. I bet the good stuff isn’t even in there.”

“Probably. I wonder what Mr. Mallory is going to want to do now.”

“You call him yet?”

I shook my head. “I’d like to have an idea what happened before I do. He’s never said why he wants to have Proxima investigated, just that he did.”

“The money is good and the work is clean, but you know I don’t like it, him never meeting us face to face. This guy could be anyone.”

I’ve only spoken to Mr. Mallory four or five times since he hired us. Usually the calls were handled by his assistant Cheryl, and only if he wanted to talk about what we had for him would Cheryl call me back and put him on.

“Yeah, it seems suspicious, but as you said, the money is good.” I fished my phone out of my pocket and glanced to see if I had any alerts. “You think anything interesting will turn up this morning?”

Jonas glanced at the computer screen. The program he had monitoring social media was up. “Maybe, but there’s a lot of noise out there right now. A lot of speculation. Unless whoever whacked him was an absolute idiot, I doubt anything will come up on there. Rumors and conjecture only go so far.”

“Yeah,” I said, walking over to my desk and sitting down. A stack of property records was on it, each an interesting purchase or sale of real estate Proxima had made in the last six months. They sure did a lot of business. “Might as well check in and see if he’s got something for us or this is the end of the case.”

Jonas nodded, picking up the receiver. He recorded all my calls with Mr. Mallory and listened to them so we stayed on the same page. I picked up the mouthpiece and dialed the number I had for Cheryl on my desk phone. I’d never figured out where she worked and what her actual job title was. She could have been anything from a secretary to a high-powered lawyer for as much as I know about her. I’d first assumed secretary for how she referred to Mr. Mallory, but I’d started to suspect that she was much higher placed in whatever organization he ran. I’d also long ago traced this number to a VOIP number, so I had no idea where they were located.

The phone rang twice before Cheryl picked. “Mr. Mallory was wondering when you were going to call,” she said. I strained my ears to hear anything else beyond her voice on the other end, but it was silent.

“We were checking to see if any interesting tidbits about the murder had come up.”

“And did you find anything?”

“Nothing interesting unless you want the usual set of conspiracy theories.”

“I see. Well, he’s very interested about what happened. If you find any privileged information about the murder, please let me know.”

It occurred to me then it was quite possible Mr. Mallory put out a hit on Arthur Burke and he was going to use us to see if the police had any suspicions about that. Since I had never found a Mallory that should have such a detailed interest in Proxima, I’d assumed that to be an alias. Not knowing who my employer is was possibly a blessing.

“I do have some details on their latest real estate deals. We’ve been going over county records for the areas you mentioned. I was organizing that last night, and they’ve been quite busy in that area.”

“You’ll have to send those over and I’ll take a look. In the meantime, Mr. Mallory would like to talk to you personally. He said I should patch you over when you called.”

“Sure, I’ll be happy to talk to him,” I said, tilting an ear to show Jonas my surprise.

“All right, let me connect you,” Cheryl said before the line went dead.

I waited, thinking about what this was about. Even when they called me, it could take a couple minutes before my call would be transferred, but Mr. Mallory picked up immediately. It sounded like he really wanted to talk.

”Sam, I was hoping you’d call me this morning. You’ve seen the news, right?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Mallory.”

“Did you see any warning signs this could happen.”

Everyone important enough gets death threats on the internet, so it’s hard to know if any of them are real or just people talking tough who’ve got no guts to do what their words claim they want to do. “Nothing unusual,” I said.

“Hmm, well if you can find out who did it, I’d like to know.”

“If I find a lead, I’ll let you know. I assume you are going to want us to keep investigating Proxima’s business deals then?”

“Yeah. I need to know what they’re up too. See what you can find out about the murder and what the police know.”

“It’s not easy to get any information from the police without sources on the inside or outright bribing them. You know that’s not my speed.”

“I need everything you can find. Check social media and see what the word is. Even the smallest clue could be the lead we need.”

Yup, it was definitely a Monday. More work and less time to do it in. “We’ll do some looking.”

“Good.” He paused. “I’m counting on you Jonas to get to the bottom of this. A lot of things are going on, and I need to find out who the players in this are.”

That perked my ears. “Is there something you should be telling me?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Just keep doing what you’re doing, and it will be fine.”

My tail drooped. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Good, good. Let me know what shows up,” said Mr. Mallory. “I’ll be expecting a call from you soon.” With that the line went dead. I put the phone down and stared at it. Jonas pulled off his headset.

“That’s ominous,” he said.

“Yeah.” I scratched at an ear. “You think someone knows Mr. Mallory hired us to snoop into Proxima?”

That rat tapped his claws against his desk. “Possibly.”

“See if you can get that police report. I don’t care who you have to pay off, if it’s reasonable, pay it. Just make sure they give us the whole thing.”

“Sure. I’ll call Eva also.”

I shrank down in my chair. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” I didn’t want to see my ex right now, not about something like this.

“She’s good, Sam. We are going need insurance. Maybe we can meet her for lunch.”

I could already feel the headache forming. I know what she was going to say. “Fine.”