Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Here we are again! Wednesday and we’re preparing to participate in zoe’s most excellent bloghop, the Six Sentence Story. (Damn, if I’d of perceived my schoolwork anywhere close to the way I’m currently chasing skills at this writing thing, who knows where I’d be today!) oh well, better late than never, ya know?

In any event, what we gots here is a bloghop that invites all to write (and post through the link thing at z’s blog) a story of six and only six sentences. And, this is the important part, (the) story must utilize the prompt word. Each week we are provided a new prompt word, the grain of sand, destined to become a pearl.

This week the word is ‘Well’.

(Note this week we will rejoin our as-yet unidentified detective as he meets his client in, ‘The Mystery of the Lost Starr’. If you want to follow along, here is Chapter 1) (oh, yeah… if you want some background music for your read, here’s some Miles)

Looking as out-of-place as a Persian cat at a dry cleaners, the woman gave my office a once-over that confirmed that she didn’t get down to this part of town all that much and pulled her raincoat tight around her body, making sure nothing accidentally touched her, while guaranteeing that my attention didn’t wander.

I thought about standing up, but since I had no plans to offer her my chair, I cleared the files off the top of my desk; without the yellow-lined pads and 8×11 photos from a recent case, a once-dark square of wood showed opposite the leather upholstered chair in front of my desk; I nodded, she glanced at the door, held her handbag in front of her like a medieval breastplate and sat down.

“I have a problem and I need your help,” now that the pool of light on my desk worked up the nerve to touch the sleeve that rested on the arm of the chair, I noticed she wore a blonde wig, as effective a disguise as a seven-year-old boy’s Zorro mask; the hair was cheap, the makeup professional and her watch cost more than my last divorce. She stared at me with the look of the man forced to sit in a doctor’s office and wait for the results of a paternity test, resigned but angry at the wrong person, on this rainy Thursday morning it looked like she thought that should be me.

“I’m a licensed PI, I have half a law degree, a black belt and when I’m not having lunch standing at the strip club down the street, I wonder if I’ve made the best career choices, that said, it’s 1:30 in the morning; so you might as well spill it, and since my per diem is determined by my clients FICO score, I’ll spot you 15 minutes, off the clock.”

“I want you to find my sister, Starr,” every neurolinguistic telltale started going off as soon as she said the word, ‘want’ and, by the time she finished, pronouncing ‘sister’ with the ‘S’ in jealousy, I decided I needed to get in the habit of locking my door after nine pm.