Fred Forchelli - Chapter 1

 

Fred Forchelli

World-renowned

Well-known

Investigator and Lawyer

 

The Case of the Piece of Paper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A short story

by

Alan Russell

 

Chapter 1 – The Office

It was an overly-warm, sultry day in late May – which forebode a summer which would have many more such days – when struggling attorney Frederick Flintstone Forchelli, who was convinced that his parents must have named him after drinking something much stronger than the diet Pepsi that he preferred, opened the door of the small non-airconditioned office on the upper floor in the converted factory/office building which was all he could afford at this stage of his career.

At first glance everything looked as it had when he had locked the door the previous Friday. There was a heavy wooden desk along the left wall – it had only cost him $5 at the local Goodwill a few years ago, but then he had to pay two burley guys to collect it in a rusted pickup and haul it up the stairs since there was no elevator in the building. They had been using some fairly colorful language by the time they finally got it through the door and properly positioned. They had also been sweating profusely. While they accepted the $30 he had paid them for their services, he was pretty certain that they used some more of that colorful language to describe him once they were out of earshot. The desk served him well – except for the left-hand middle drawer which tended to stick when it got humid – which was most of the time. And nobody particularly noticed the shabbiness of the desk as it was well covered with stacks of books, manila folders, and the typical detritus that lawyers tend to accumulate.

The right wall of the office was occupied by a metal Steelcase bookcase – also rescued from the local Goodwill for $2. He had transported that himself by putting the shelves in the back seat and tying the shell to the roof of his car with a couple of ropes. The roof was already scratched up, so the addition of a few more scratches did not concern him as much as the strange looks he received from passing motorists gawking at him during the trip to the office. But he had underestimated the effort it would take to get the bookcase up the flights of stairs, and it took two weeks before the scrapes on his forearms healed properly. Once he reassembled it, he had nearly filled it with all the law textbooks that he had accumulated. However, he found that with only a few exceptions that he had never referenced those textbooks and now they mostly gathered dust. The original unfilled portion of the shelves were now stuffed with the overflow of manila folders that would not fit in his desk. Additional folders covered the tops of the unused books as well as the space under the lowest shelf.

The only other furniture in the room was a pair of chairs – not a matching pair, certainly, but there were two of them. There was a typical wooden chair to the left of the desk which was for clients – when they visited him in the office, which was not very frequently. It also was currently occupied by a couple of piles of folders for his last few cases. But they could be cleared off pretty quickly if necessary.

But the entire center of the room was dominated by Fred’s pride and joy – a high-backed imitation leather chair. It not only swiveled but could roll around on the five-wheeled base. And even better, it reclined! So besides being useful when he had to turn toward the bookcase to locate a needed folder, Fred had spent many hours leaned back in that chair as he pondered the evidence he had collected and considered how to best approach solving a case. He had ordered it from a catalog where the company would even deliver it to his office. Conveniently, the delivery date had turned out to be a Saturday, and since the other offices on that floor were closed, he was able to spread out all the components in the hallway during the time it took to assemble it. The necessary Allen wrenches were even included in the plastic covered and numbered cardboard sheet that held the various assembly components. There had only been one small moment of panic when he had one extra screw and one extra washer left over at the end of the process. But then he noticed that the instructions mentioned that extra parts were included in case of any manufacturing defects. Those extra parts, along with the instructions, were safely ensconced in the back of the bottom left-hand drawer.

There were only a few other items in the office. There was an electric pencil sharpener and a hot plate and coffee pot on the windowsill that were plugged into the only outlet in the room which was just below the window. Fred didn’t normally drink coffee, but if he was going to be having a client, he would fill the pot from the sink in the bathroom down the hall and make some – usually to be thrown out unused after the client left. There was a telephone/answering machine on the right-hand side of the desk. And there was a coat hook on the inside of the door with Fred’s sports coat hanging on it. The light on the answering machine was not blinking – that was pretty typical. Fred did most of his business on the low-end flip phone in his pocket. But the office phone was the one listed in the various Internet sites for his business.

Fred put his briefcase on the floor next to the bookshelves and sagged into his office chair. He had a couple of follow-up phone calls to make and some notes to clean up from the cases he had been working on the last week. But otherwise, it promised to be a typically dull Monday. It was only approaching 9 o’clock and already the temperature was getting uncomfortable. He pondered whether he should invest in a fan to put on the windowsill. Since the coffee pot got so little use, he could use that second plug for the fan. And if he needed to recharge the laptop that was in his briefcase, he could always unplug the pencil sharpener. But he would also have to then worry about the impact that a fan could have on the loose pieces of paper on his desk or on the top of the bookcase. Was he willing to change his habits just to have the comfort of the air movement from the fan?

It was while he was pondering the wisdom of this expense that he saw it. Something was out of place! On the floor where the door had pushed it when he had come into the office was a folded piece of paper with “Fred Forchelli, Esq.” written on it!

  

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