Chapter Twenty One

                                              Time Forward 4


Loveland, Ohio

Tuesday 5/7/15

4: 40 PM

“Fifteen-twelve and you’ve a deal!” Agie said.

Reaching across the desk, the banker shook hands with the female Lawyer.

“So we’ve no future misunderstands,…” Morrie stated “...Agnes and I have purchased one of the three houses you’re in the process of building for ‘fifteen hundred and twelve dollars’ and we have ‘free and clear’ ownership of the old Procter Hardware Store!”

 

“Yes…” Forester said as, opening the center desk drawer there is a metallic rattling as “...so long as we are in complete accord,” holding a ring of four keys towards Agie, whom agreeing says, “We are,” nodding her head to the left, motioning the banker to give the keys to her husband.

Standing. “Our business here is finished, then?”

“Yes. And you say the back room of our store is furnished and clean enough for Morris and myself to live in until the house is finished?”

Putting the black fedora on, “Ken and Oliva lived there for years, and he was a rather inventive man, so I’d say…” taking two cigars from the humidor om the desk “...absolutely…” placing them into his breast pocket “...yes, and you might even be surprised.”

Following Forester to the door. “Oh...” Agie said, waiting until he locked the door “...would you mind, a favour, please?”

 

Wanting nothing more than to be away from this monster woman. “Yes…” the short hairs on the back of his neck rising. “... uh, what that be?”

“A telephone, please. Would you mind calling the telephone company to order a phone for us?”

This simple request causing an unheard, relieved sigh. “Of course I will. In what name would you like it?”

A questioning look to her husband.

Thinking a moment. “Pink’s Hardware.” Morrie said.”

“Alright, I’ll take care of it in the morning.” Tapping the brim of the hat. “Goodnight.”

4:47 PM

Only five doors from the bank, leaving the automobile.

The long shank key obviously for the door; unlocking it, for the first time, Morrie and Agie entered their newly named: ‘Pink’s Hardware’.

Still in daylight, within four or five feet from the door is a six foot long counter and directly above a dangling length of twine. Stepping forward Agie pulled the twine lighting a bare bulb light bulb hanging three feet below the ten foot high, white painted ceiling.

“Well…” Morrie said “...seems we have electricity.”

Pulling hanging twine, bringing bare bulbs to life as, stepping further into what appeared to be a twenty by forty foot room with benefit of twelve bare bulb lights hanging approximately seven feet above the cement deck.

Agie never being in a hardware store before,“And lots and lots of…” The room from side to side, from front to rear — with room enough to walk between — contained bins and shelves and counters and steel chests of drawers all containing….

“Hardware.” Morrie said to Agie. “We’ve lots and lots of hardware.”

To the rear, coming to an eight foot high partition running from side wall to side wall, making — seeing, once they entered— a twenty by fourteen room with a padlocked doorway leaving two feet of upper airspace.

“This their room,” Agnes said as neither an exclamation or a question as Morrie unlocked the padlock, opening into a…

“Oliva must have cleaned this just before they dragged the poor woman to the ‘Mad House.” Agie stated.

The double size bed made with what appeared to be freshly laid bedding. And though there were two of the bare bulb hanging lights, there was also a lamp— an oil reading lamp— on end tables on either side of the bed with the lamp on the far side also giving light to the right side of a sofa. Above the sofa Ken Procter had constructed a casement window, and to the left another solid wood, padlocked door leading to the outside loading area and out-house.

Upon that back wall there was a kitchen sink with, of all things, the water pump directly alongside with a curved pipe— apparently the means to drain the dirty water from inside to outside, and alongside a small cooking range using range oil as its heat source.

On the corner of this makeshift room were two standing sheets of four by eight lumber fitted with a privacy doorway forming a four by four room that, upon opening the door, Morrie ‘amazingly’ discovered an indoor water closet with yet another —ventilating— casement window set above the commode. And then, upon further inspection discovered something he had never actually seen or even thought of since dropping out of his third year engineering course. This small room was in actuality a ‘siphoning water closet’, meaning that the very clever and industrious Kenneth Procter had engineered and produced a means to flush the polluted toilet water from inside to some sort of catch basin or cesspool located at some distance outside.

Most of which ‘Morris Pinowskiz, AKA Solomon Berkowitz, AKA Morrie Pink, AKA Morris Pink, thought he would incorporate into their new home.

5:10 PM

Unlocking the padlocked rear door, Agni waited as Morrie went back to the automobile and drove it onto ‘Pink’s’ loading dock, where their suitcases would be brought into their new, temporary, home, then, following Forester’s instructions, waked the two blocks to the three, two by four wood beamed skeletal structures.

Before each structure were large, canvas covered mounds of bricks and stacks of exterior redwood. One mound of white bricks, one mound of natural colored bricks and the third, red brick.

“So, what do you think?”

“You’re the homemaker, honey.”

Playfully jabbing him with her elbow. “That’s how you see me, as a ‘homemaker’?”

Laughing. “Thought so until you became, uh, the city of Lovelands new resident lawyer.”

 

“Did lay it on pretty thick…” nodding her head “...back there.”

“Agie, honey, you scared— excuse me — the shit out of that poor man.”

“For three years I had to sit like a ventriloquist dummy listening to them ‘blah’, ‘blah’, ‘blah’, when I knew, I knew more than those overstuffed, self-important —excuse me...” another word she’d learned during her ‘fly on the wall’ days” “...ass-holes.”

“All right, Agie. So here we are in the country, starting to talk like ‘country folk’. So again I will ask— and ‘no’ ! I do not think of you as a ‘homemaker’ but which brick do you like?”

“The red.”

 

“Yes, me, too.”

“Had a feeling!” Changing the subject: “You getting hungry?”

“Yes, actually, but…” studying the skeleton structure “...I’m thinking— with your approval, of course— that we'd have our two bedrooms in the front separated by a, uh… room to take our baths and use the commode, with all water and, uh, our waste being pumped, or, like Ken Procter did, I can make a siphoning water system to carry it all to however far we dig the cesspool or, if possible—depending on the subterranean water levels and how the city sewage system is set up, one of the new septic systems, but whichever we do it will be as far from the house as possible.”

“You can do this?”

“Sweetheart, I am an engineer, after all!”

After all, really, what do these two actually know of each other?

Five days! It had been but five days since the gentlemanly — in her opinion— extremely cute, Englishman had introduced himself without the slightest hint of animosity towards a lowly female in this man’s esteemed position.

Agnes Longstead, working day after day for three years at National City Bank had become expert in the judgement of those coming in contact with this ‘female’ bank teller, and immediately felt affection for this ‘cute’ British gentleman.

And now, three days into her marriage: Becoming part owner of a going business. Having a bank account with a huge sum of cash; not just in the name of her husband but her name also. And the intelligence and power to to bring a groveling bank manager onto his knees while conceding her bargained price for their new home. And, of course, this bankers wholly erroneous assumption that Agnes Longstead, AKA Agnes Pink was a, unheard of, ‘female Attorney at Law’... An assumption Agie had no intention of correcting.

Studding women and learning their attitudes while working in an upper end British/German jewellery store in a fashionable area of Berlin, Morris had met—in his estimation— good women and nice women, but most and more often those he had met as a lowly salesman were, in his opinion, selfish and conniving saying whatever needed to wheezel from their male companion what they ’so’ needed

Five days! It had been but five days since Morris— on the run, had met this lovely, unbelievably intelligent, ambitious woman that, at that time, the only things they did have in common were oysters, martinis and, of course, their growing interest in mutual sexual gratification.

Now married. Now into their third day of marriage settling in America’s mid-western state of Ohio in the near anonymous city of Loveland where, for the first time since the theft of the eight diamonds from the shop in

Germany, ‘Morris Pinowskiz, AKA Solomon Berkowitz, AKA Morrie Pink, AKA Morris Pink was where he, safely, had planned to be.

Furthermore, though he hated the thought, but there being absolutely nothing he could do about it.

With the sinking of the British Ocean Liner, ‘Lusitania’ containing a passenger list of 1,198 people, including 128 American citizens by a Nazi U-boat causing America and Great Briton to enter an edict of war…

So now, thought Morrie, the idea of German detectives being allowed into the United States to track a jewel thief with a British passport is more than likely, impossible.

5:28 PM

Walking back to ‘Pink’s’. “You remember seeing any kind of a restaurant when we came into town?”

“No.”

“What say then, we get the Chevy and seeing as we know there was nothing down the road, what say then we head up the road a bit to see what’s there.”

“ ‘Summer Springs’…” Morrie said “... is up-road a mile or two.”

5:47 PM

Entering the village of Summer Springs:’ ‘Population 1,905’, within the first—and possibly only city block, there was ‘Maize's Eats’ on the right and directly across the black top street is ‘Elmer’s Groceries’.

“Ah-ha! A bonanza…” Agie said “...dinner and groceries.”

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