Harrison pulled up his squad car outside ivy-covered gates. Below him the city sparkled like a jewel. It looked like heaven from a distance. He pushed a button set into the stone. A crackling honey voice wafted , ‘Ye-eesss?’
‘Police, Miss Marchant.’
‘Ah, yes. I’ve been expecting you.’
He was ushered into a room that seemed to serve no purpose, other than to be the bottom of a sweeping staircase. It was on the landing, halfway up, he first saw her in the flesh. Martine Marchant, pronounced with an inflection, born Mary Martin in a two-bit town that had since blown away. And she was magnificent. Backlighting traced her curves through fine silk.
‘We’ll talk upstairs.’ She beckoned then turned.
Harrison was a hard cop with a brittle heart. Before long she had him wrapped around the same little finger that had beckoned him upstairs.
On his second visit he took flowers.
On his third he took a pearl broache worth a month’s pay.
But his fourth came after a chance conversation with a neighbour who’d been on the road the night of the murder. He took cuffs and back-up.
It was Miss Marchant who greeted him. But the woman whose rights he read, minutes later was someone altogether different—the dustbowl daughter the actress had once been.
2011—Richard Holt / small stories about love (smallstoriesaboutlove.wordpress.com)
small stories about love 