Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
What follows is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Unicorn Challenge.
Hosted by jenne and ceayr, this bloghop offers a different photo each week and invites one and all to write a story. One thing though, there is a limit of two hundred and fifty words on our offerings.
Not that I’m blaming Misky or Nancy for reminding me how much fun noir can be. Much. Our protagonist today, Ian Devereaux, can be found in a number of Serial Sixes, including ‘the Case of the Missing Fig Leaf’. Here’s a taste: Chapter Four.
In a profession that measures success in binary terms, I frequently ask myself, ‘Why’?
Arguably the ‘First Question’, on this particular Wednesday on the Corner of High and Longwell Ste, it Farbergé’d itself into: ‘How did I let myself be persuaded to fly to London, drive to Oxford, all to locate a missing college president I didn’t know from Adam?’
My quarry had just disappeared behind a blue-grey door at the precise moment morning classes released a torrent of students onto the narrow sidewalks.
Like the pencil-nudge of the ill-prepared friend during a final exam, a childhood memory elbowed itself to the front of my consciousness; my mother concluding a lecture on Life with ‘...and never do business with friends or family‘.
Giving up hope for this billable morning, I sat-leaned against a low wall in front of the Magdalen College Library. Like a drinking buddy, sure you had money for another round, the memory of Monday morning three days prior kept me company…
“Besides being the President of the college, Rose is a friend. I’d really appreciate it, if you could help find her, Ian.”
There’s an adage about public speaking everyone’s heard. To overcome the fear it helps to picture the audience naked. I can attest to one corollary of this advice. Make the lecture hall a walk-in shower and my friend, Dr. Leanne Thunberg, the lecturer. It doesn’t take a doctorate, (which she had from Radcliffe College), to know there was zero probability I could say no.
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About clarkscottroger
Your usual inimitable creation of intrigue, simile and imagery.
Love it.
PS Any photos of Dr Thunberg?
lol
Don’t tell anyone, but she is a work of fiction, a character which, as we all revel in, demands (of the author, a description to one level of precision or another)… now, I like you, ceayr, so what say I copy/paste the first time Ian Devereaux met Dr Leanne Thunberg?
‘The Case of the Missing Starr’
Chapter 4
“Send him in…”
Standing in the outer office of the Department of Advanced Anthropology and Cultural Semiotics, I didn’t feel out of place. Not like when I applied for a position as a personal trainer at a suburban health club. There was something about colleges that I liked. That the admin rolled her eyes at the abrupt command spraying from the old-fashioned intercom, didn’t hurt either.
Dr. Leanne Thunberg was standing in front of her desk. She couldn’t have been more than five foot three, had a very good figure and almost-black hair worn very short. She had a definite Noomi Rapace thing going on, only sexy-petite rather than scary-petite.
“Yes?”
The office was large enough for a leather sofa and two armchairs arranged around a low table piled high with journals and papers. Her desk was just short of ornate, like the glimpse of a garter belt in a 1940s movie. I couldn’t see a single cigarette burn anywhere in the top.
I held out my PI license by way of introduction, figuring that credentials ranked pretty high in a place like Radcliffe. She glanced down briefly enough to make it clear she wasn’t impressed. I didn’t doubt for a second that if someone asked her about me next week, she could recite my date of birth and license number. The intensity of intelligence in her eyes almost reflected off the plastic lamentation. Without a word, she walked back around to the business side of the desk.
“How may I help you, Mr. Devereaux?”
“I’ve been hired to locate a missing person. Starr Tudor. According to my information, you’re her faculty advisor.” I held up my manila folder as I said, ‘her faculty advisor’. The term in neurolinguistics is ‘anchoring’. The sales guys call it a ‘trial close’.
“Your information is correct. However, I haven’t seen Starr since late in the fall semester of last year. I have no idea where she might be now. She was a student, not a colleague.” She nodded towards one of two chairs in front of her desk. I could see a timer start in her head and, figuring it never hurt to be underestimated, I sat as quickly as I could. Her eye lids lowered a fraction and I resisted a smile.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Instead of the interrogative lilt at the end of her question, she raised a single, perfect eyebrow.
“…couldn’t you simply have used the phone? Even with the necessary credential checks, I’m sure you could have saved yourself a drive from Providence.”
I figured agreeing with her at this point would have been over-kill and instead asked, “Are you aware of any clubs or organizations she might have been a part of, any extracurricular interests or associations?”
“Starr was not much of a joiner; however, she was part of a small group of students, all very much the outsiders. Which, given the social matrix here, is saying something.” Pausing, she picked up her phone and finger-painted something on the screen. Whatever she was looking for was mostly graphic, as primary colors reflected from her glasses. She began smiling to herself in that way people do when they forget they’re not alone.
Looking back at me, she continued, “They were known among the faculty as ‘the Most Likely to Subvert Club’. Their interests tended towards dual-value disciplines, IT and computer science, finance and biotech.”
Something flickered in the back of my mind, “Every group organized sufficiently to earn a public identity usually maintains a location, even if it’s non-temporal.” Dean Thunberg stopped looking at her phone and leaned slightly forward. If I still smoked, I’d have offered one at this point.
“Surely you know that when a group organizes to the point of providing a sense of membership among its constituents, there is inevitably a sense of a defined territory, even if it’s not obviously marked. Nothing as simple and obvious as a clubhouse, or favorite table in the coffee house, but a place that members and only members are aware of. Tell me you academics don’t have a cool Greco-Roman word for that.”
“For a detective you apply a surprising amount of thought to your work. I would imagine this must help pass the time parked outside a motel at two o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon waiting for your target to check out.”
The intensity in her eyes grew, a by-product of some psychic flare-up. It was, however, all in her eyes. Most people move more than they realize when they’re in a conversation. This women’s posture was dynamic without being obvious. Sort of psycho-sexual isometrics. I almost laughed and she noticed.
“Did I say something to amuse you, Mr. Devereaux?” She stared at me and her ‘scary-petite’ asserted itself. I decided that my chances of learning something were better with Kendra in the outer office and stood.
“Do you have to leave so soon?” Oddly enough, her tone made me think of a rainy afternoon in the eighth grade and a girl who thought she had a crush on me. To my credit, I didn’t bolt for the door. Less impressive, but mercifully private, were the hairs standing up on the back of my neck.
“The group Starr spent so much time with dispersed rather suddenly, if faculty gossip is reliable and, trust me, it is. That is the sort of thing you detectives find useful, isn’t it, Ian? Things that exist and things that suddenly do not?” For reasons I was afraid I might come to understand, there was a subtle change in her demeanor to something best described as mischievous.
Well, Clark, you’ve served up a real cornucopia of similes and metaphors this week.
Right from ‘it Farbergé’d itself into…’ to that final paragraph which shows most clearly why Ian couldn’t say no, you entertained.
En plus, as they say over here, it’s made me look back at other Ian Devereaux stories…
at the risk of sounding unctuous, it’s all ’cause of the company I keep.
no, serially! odd, uncommon words are simply fun to use and the gang of mutants you and c have attracted share, I truly believe, this view, (Way critical difference from the advice of writing teachers, which I’ll be the first to admit are talking about a Readership much less defined, as in the general public that one should avoid the less-turned pages of the dictionary under pain of Readers taking offense.)
ya know?
And, that Fabergé-as-a-verb thing? That is pure and simple fun. Though I do believe were it not for the Doctrine and my present company, I might not have had the nerve to try it.
“…it Farbergé’d itself into…” OK – wished I’d come up with that one. Excellent
Ian and Leanne. Fun but not for long term. We all know who “long term” is!
Enjoyable read, Clark.
When you are a sucker for a particular person, it makes life complicated. Nicely done!