The “D” Tective Agency

 

Today's Episode...

Keep-away

 

          They were best friends and decided in the seventh grade they were going to be world famous detectives.  It made sense that Danielle Porter and Dana Hunter keep the name they had come up with so many years ago when their English teacher had announced to the entire class that the two giggling girls would forever be “D” students. That was the name they had stenciled on their bedroom doors, and now - 14 years later, it was on their 5^th floor office, in the UTB Bank building in downtown Cargo Falls.

 

          They had chosen the bank building for their office not so much because the rent was cheap, because it wasn’t, but because the giant U.T.B. letters at the top of the building, in their minds, stood for, “Under the Bed”, which is where they would always hide when they were kids, whenever they were scared or in trouble.

 

       Danielle, with her short, business type hair was the more stylish dresser and kept a firm grip on their finances, while Dana was still more of a tomboy, just as she had been when she was growing up, and she was definitely the more athletic of the two.

 

          It was in anticipation of trouble that Dana had put herself through self-defense classes, mastering both Judo and Aikido.  With the exception of the insect world, Dana was extremely brave and adventurous, while Danielle was much more refined, and could charm the sly off of a fox. 

 

          It was Danielle who had convinced the two biggest law firms in town to use their services whenever they needed investigative work done, and one of those firms, Klein, Flynn and Drake occupied the whole 9^th floor, right there in the UTB building.  It was Hamilton Drake himself, who had phoned Danielle and asked them both to come up to his office. 

 

          The two women rode up in the posh elevator wondering why Drake had called them personally.  In the past, a bonded runner hand-delivered a manila envelope full of instructions and scheduled deadlines, but that was when they were working out of their apartment. 

 

Now they were here, working in the same building as their client and still giggling about it as they rode up to the 9^th floor.  

 

 

 Danielle checked herself out in the highly polished mirror as they stepped off the elevator.  She was pleased with her new shoes.  They had just enough heel to make her seem taller than Dana.  When they got to Drake’s outer office, Nora Evens, Mr. Drake’s receptionist told them to go right in.      

 

The office was an impressive display of rich leather and highly polished mahogany.  There were four photographs of a large sailing vessel on one wall, and several awards proudly displayed across from the glassed-in bookcases.

 

Behind the desk, and next to the window that overlooked downtown Cargo Falls, hung two degrees, the top one was from Harvard Law School, and below that was a Master’s degree in criminal justice from Duke University.

 

As the two detectives stood looking around, Drake entered the office from a side door.

 

“Have a seat, ladies.  Thank you for meeting with me”

 

Dana sat in one of the two chairs that faced Drake’s desk and said, “Looks a lot like our office.”

 

Drake didn’t smile.  He sat on the front edge of his desk and after a momentary pause said,

“At the moment I do not need your investigative services.  We do have a situation, however, that I think you may be able to help with.”

 

Danielle sat back against the soft leather back of the chair.  “We’ll need to know details of exactly what you want us to do, and what, if any, are the hazards.”

 

Drake stood up and walked around behind his desk.  Leaning forward he pressed the intercom and asked Nora to hold his calls for the moment. 

 

He looked at them both and said that if either of them had any kind of recording devices on them that they should turn them off now.  Danielle started to explain that they didn’t work like that when she noticed Dana reach into her purse and pull out a little Sony tape recorder and switch it off.

 

Danielle:  “Where did you get that?”

 

Drake: “That’s not important.  Thank you for being honest.  Before I explain the job to you I need your word that even if you refuse the task, you are never to mention this meeting or what I am about to ask you to do.”

 

Danielle was thinking that this didn’t sound like anything she wanted to get involved with, but she found herself asking what the job would pay.

 

Drake:  “I need your word before we go any further.”

 

Dana:  “We’re not going to say anything.  How much work do you think we’ll get if our own clients can’t trust us?”

 

Drake looked over at Danielle.

 

Danielle:  “We won’t tell a soul.  Now, what’s the job?”

 

Drake:  “My partners and I are working on a case right now that has taken all three of us and a small fortune to get to…  Well, let me just say that we are at a critical point and this morning when I came in I found that a note had been slipped under the door to the outer office.

 

          It basically says that a very damaging piece of evidence has been placed inside a violin case.  The case, it goes on to say, is being shipped via FedEx, from location to location.  “They” are intending to play keep-away with it until the last minute, then it will somehow be delivered to the Prosecuting Attorney, at which point the fate of our client will be sealed.”

 

Dana:  “Where do we come in?”

 

Drake:    “What I need you both to do is to hack into the FedEx system, find the package, switch it with a dummy package, so that nobody at FedEx, or anywhere else is the wiser, and…”

 

Danielle:  “Deliver it to you?”

 

Drake:  “Absolutely not.  I do not want it, I can’t even know about it.  I just need you to make sure that no one else gets it either.”

 

Dana:   “So it’s reasonable to assume that there will be people out there doing their best to see that we do not succeed?”

 

Drake:  “We are prepared to pay you $5,000.00 plus expenses.”

 

Dana:  “I’ll take that as a “Yes.”

 

Danielle:  “This is not the kind of work we do.”

 

Drake:  “I’ll understand if you turn it down.”

 

Dana:  “She didn’t say that.”

 

Drake:  “Unfortunately I can’t let you go off to think about it.  I need to know one way or the other before you leave.   I can wait in the outer office if you want to talk it over.”

 

Danielle:  “That would be nice.  Thank you.”

 

When Drake left the room, Dana turned to Danielle and whispered, “Did you get it?”

Danielle pulled a similar recording device from her purse and clicked it off.

 

Danielle:  “Every word.”

 

 

To be continued...