Tag: shoplifting

Story, The Best Results Blog

The 8:00 PM ferry

Dogsandbikes.com

Is my life better or worse since the bag, SFW mused, watching the docked Gambit recede from the stern of the ferry. She opened her handbag and gazed into its blackness wondering what happened to all the things she put inside that disappeared then reappeared. Walt gazed back, unseen, still stunned by what he’d seen from the other side of  the open bag. She relaxed forward on the railing as the sun slowly dropped toward the horizon.

“I don’t remember seeing you on the ferry out here,” a man said. She recognized Macallan’s voice. “Mac,” she said, turning, inching close in to him like she would a lover. This wasn’t a flirtation, but a sudden need to be encircled by someone familiar. “In fact, I swear I saw you get on that boat over there with someone a few hours ago. Different dress, but she had your walk.”

“Do I have such a distinctive way of walking?”

“Did you know that a person’s gait is as individual as fingerprints?” Did I leave fingerprints? She began thinking about details. Could she just sail away on the 8:00 PM ferry trouble-free? Now there was Macallan to consider.

“You know,” he said. “Alethia has family here. We don’t get here as often as we’d like but I’ve seen hundreds of sunsets and this one’s going to be a good one.” She nodded. There will be a story tomorrow about a yacht abandoned on the island, and a search for the owner. Hopefully they won’t find the body or the dress. Maybe a witness saw them together. Maybe she left fingerprints or something else behind on the boat. Macallan will quickly piece it together so she decided she would tell him what happened before they docked at Mykonos.

“We’re out here on this ferry in another part of the world and I’m hoping you can clear something up for me. This has been eating at me for weeks.” She smiled. “How did you do it? How did you get those clothes out of my store?”

“Mac, who is this?” a woman’s voice said. SFW turned toward her, extended her hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Susannah Fontaine-Williams.”

Let’s leave things as they are for today and end with the cloudless sunset that didn’t quite live up to Macallan’s prediction.

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Story, The Best Results Blog

The lone witness

Dogsandbikes.com

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Breathing hurt. Susannah Fontaine-Williams quickly peeled off her suddenly blood-stained dress. She poured what was left of her bottled water on her hands and wiped clean the blood with the unstained parts of the dress. She tossed the dress and the bottle down the cistern into which the tall Greek man had staggered and fallen with the knife buried hilt-deep in his gut.

For a moment she stood naked in the shadows, save for the sunhat that had remained firmly on her head. She strained to listen for sounds, anything, approaching voices, footsteps, a dying man struggling in the sickly green water. But all was quiet. She pushed the gravel with her feet to make sure her hearing still worked. Except for a lizard standing atop an ancient wall, there wasn’t another creature in sight.

From her bag, she pulled the cute blue and white striped dress she had shoplifted in Santorini a few days earlier. Though she hadn’t tried it on first, it fit perfectly. She sat on the edge of the cistern, closed her eyes, and caught a vivid glimpse of an alternate life. She sat by a swimming pool dangling her feet in the cool water watching Bob Williams playing with their triplets. He picked up their daughter, tossing her gently and she splashed down, holding her nose to keep the water out. “Me next, daddy!” the boys screamed. 

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Macallan finds nothing in SFW’s stylish, yet functional bag

Dogsandbikes.com

The head of security at Neiman’s, Macallan, saw what he saw in the monitor and radio’d the doormen to stop the blond talk show host as she left the building. The man everyone called  Single Malt very much liked Susannah Fontaine-Williams. They’d met a few times in the massive department store and she chatted with him as if they were old grade school buddies who’d somehow lost track of each other over the years. She remembered his wife’s name and how old his kids were. He made a point to DVR her show though he seldom had a chance to watch it, what with the crazy hours and the side jobs.

So when Darrel’s voice came over the radio, “She’s here boss,” he felt more than a tinge of sadness as he made his way to the 52nd Street entrance. He found Susannah Fontaine-Williams and Darell talking  basketball. “If I was the NBA comissioner, Miss Fontaine-Williams…” “Please, Darrel, just call me Susannah already.”

Darrel continued, “…first thing we do is get rid of at least six, maybe eight teams. Talent’s too diluted.” She nodded appreciatively. “Then, I order the refs to start calling ‘traveling’ again. Anyone can make Top Ten if you can take four steps to the basket!”

“Mac!” SFW squealed. Macallan watched her face and body language and thought, wow, for someone caught shoplifting on camera she is one cool customer.

“Miss Fontaine-WIlliams,” he started. “I mean, Susannah, I hate to ask you this, but I need to have a look inside your bag.”

Story, The Best Results Blog, Uncategorized

After shoplifting

Dogsandbikes.com

Following the taping of SFW that afternoon, Susannah Fontaine-Williams accepted the invitation of one of her guests, the British  philosopher/astronomer Malcolm Norton-Hollings, for lunch and drinks at Fiorello’s. It was a gorgeous New York afternoon and they sat at a sidewalk table drinking something fizzy and critiquing the passersby. The bag lay at her feet and she checked it by rubbing her leg against it every few minutes. Still there. Norton-Hollings was her favorite (favourite) type of guest: intellectual, witty and tweedily good looking, there to talk up his latest book, generously dishing out the flirty banter. When Norton-Hollings excused himself to relieve himself of too much fizzy, she plopped the bag on her lap and reached inside to check on the contents. She had had no intention of taking more than one item, but once the Vera Wang had been gulped up into the bag’s void, there was the matter of the Dior, the so many things they brought her to try on that they couldn’t possibly keep count of what remained piled on the chairs and day lounge in the dressing room. The dresses were not there, nor were the shoes, nor anything else she had liberated from Neiman’s. She found, however, an envelope that she did not recall placing and pulled it out, did not look at it, and quickly tucked it back. Would it be, she wondered,  better to discuss the bag’s properties with Norton-Hollings before or after their upcoming tryst? As the distinguished scholar returned to the table squinting in the bright reflected sunlight, she thought also that it might be worthwhile to read the license agreement she had so eagerly signed.