Charlie Newgate was a nice old guy and this place will never be the same again now that he’s gone.
Charlie’d worked at Halpersons Department Store the longest of any of us. He’d have gotten his gold watch too if he’d only held out a little bit longer.
Halpersons isn’t much by big city standards, but here in Jacobsville it’s the largest store we have. There are nine of us working here now; there used to be ten. We’re open 9 to 5 Monday to Friday and 10 till 6 on Saturdays, the only change being around Christmas when we stay open a little bit later for last-minute shoppers. We have a ladieswear, a menswear, a sporting goods, a hardware and electrical, and a gardening department in season, with Charlie in charge of the hardware’s electrical department for as long as anyone can remember. I work in sporting goods with Pete Rogers, our department way on the other side of the floor from where Charlie hung his hat.
Charlie was a quiet sort of guy; kept pretty much to himself most of the time, but was quite willing to talk, if you started the conversation.
If customers bothered Charlie, he never showed it. He always kept his cool even with the most obnoxious ones, smiling and nodding his head in agreement.
On that last day Charlie came in to work as usual, his suit fitting just a bit too snuggly over his ample frame. His hair was a little disheveled, but not enough to make us wonder if there was anything wrong. Most of us figured he’d slept in, but since he wasn’t late, it didn’t really matter. We’d all done it before, so what the heck, live and let live. You know what I mean?
Anyway, we went about our own jobs and didn’t pay him any further mind until it happened.
I guess I better explain about one regular customer we had that no one liked to serve, if they could possibly avoid it. Most of us found a way to be somewhere else when this customer came into our department – preferably the stockroom – and didn’t leave till we’d gotten the all clear signal that he’d gone somewhere else. While he was a pain to everybody, this customer took particular delight in seeking out Charlie and telling him things about his family secrets that Charlie didn’t like to hear from anybody, let alone a stranger. I guess he was trying to get a rise out of Charlie or something, I don’t know, we never really tried to figure it out. We were just glad when he was gone. To be honest, he made everybody’s skin crawl.
It wasn’t just because of his dirty mouth, though; it was everything. I knew we shouldn’t be prejudiced about someone’s skin, but we made an exception in his case.
It wasn’t his fault, of course, that he had a skin pigment problem with white blotches all over his body where his olive colouring should be, but the leering look in his eyes all the time didn’t help either. Creepy was how some described him, and that was being kind.
No, all in all, he was one strange customer and not for nothing did we nickname him Two-Tone. We never knew his real name – nor wished to know either.
Anyway, that last day he came in as usual and headed straight for Charlie’s department. We didn’t have time to warn Charlie, but thinking on it now, I doubt it would have changed anything anyway.
To be honest we were thinking more of ourselves than what was happening with Charlie and Two-Tone, each one of us pointed in the opposite direction. It wasn’t until their voices began to carry across the store that we realized that this day would be different from any other before or since.
We could tell that for the first time in memory Two-Tone was actually getting a reaction out of Charlie – but not the reaction he’d been expecting. We couldn’t see him, but we were pretty sure that Two-Tone’s facial colouring had taken on another hue entirely.
Debating whether to step in, we were stunned to hear gunfire coming from their direction and hesitated before running to see what had happened.
“Please forgive me,” said Charlie over the intercom in a voice so deathly quiet it scared us.
Another shot followed and this time we did move, finding both Charlie and Two-Tone on the floor when we arrived. There was no question at all that our customer was dead, his face blown away by the magnitude of Charlie’s firepower.
Charlie was alive, but just barely. It was obvious that it wouldn’t be for long, though, the blood pouring out of the head wound he had inflicted on himself with the gun he still held in his hand.
The first to reach him, I carefully removed the gun before bending down to hear any last words he might have to say. I wasn’t disappointed.
“I guess old Two-Tone finally got what he wanted out of me,” he whispered smiling. “Looks good on him, doesn’t it?”
A page-turning novel about a relationship between best friends that is interrupted because of betrayal , deceit, sexual promiscuity and pregnancy happens!
Rovella is a beautiful woman with a cold heart whom blames herself for an unfortunate old family secret that is literally ruining her life. This secret impedes a gorgeous woman from having happiness in her childhood, and throughout her life. Dark sec
