I would like to thank Randi for the invitation to the "Hanging by a Thread" event.
I especially thank Randi for helping me to improve the quality of this story and to banish anachronisms that would otherwise detract from the story. Please read all the stories published in this event. You'll be in for a real treat.
This is a work of fiction, Any similarities to real people is coincidental.
***
"You have all the information you were after?" she asked him, expectantly.
"Pretty much. There are several points that I need clarification on from some of my contacts, but I expect to have all of those points dealt with and squared away either late this evening or by very early tomorrow morning, which is Monday, of course."
"I'm sorry that you had to work through your entire weekend," she said to him.
He shrugged. "That's really not a problem. This business tends to be 24/7, so I'm used to it. It goes with the territory, as they say. It's probably why I'm no longer married."
"Yes, but even so..."
"How do you think he'll react?"
It was her turn to shrug. "I honestly don't know. I don't know him well enough to say. I know perhaps I should, but things got screwed up way before we were even born, so I don't know."
"Okay, well, I'll be ready to put the call in to him tomorrow morning. We'll just have to see how it all works out."
It was Monday morning and Amy Fisher was getting ready for her trip back to Arizona. Even before he'd married his wife, for as long as he'd known her, even before she'd changed her name from Clarke to Fisher when they'd married, Dan Fisher's wife made the trip back to Arizona to spend the last week of every month with her one remaining relative, her older aunt who lived in an assisted living facility in Phoenix.
As usual, Dan had taken Amy to the airport and left her off at the drop off zone. Long gone were the days when you could take your honey to the gate to wish them goodbye, as quite necessary but irksome security concerns had put paid to that idea long before they'd got married.
He had driven from the airport to his workplace and parked his car in his reserved space in the underground parking garage beneath the building where his company had its HQ.
He hadn't mentioned it to Amy, he hadn't wanted to worry her, but he would have to ask his secretary Wanda to put in a call to his accountant.
Things hadn't been going all that well for Fisher Engineering Products over the last several years. He and his chief salesman Eddy Green had been discussing the downswing in sales for the company. Sales were down, but they could see no discernible reason why this was so.
All Dan knew was that if the situation didn't improve, he would have enough cash reserves to keep the company afloat until the end of the year and then he would have to consider a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He'd hate to do it, but what alternative did he have?
Meanwhile, Amy was aboard her plane, settling back in her seat On her iPhone she was playing a recording of an app her therapist had made for her. She was going from Philadelphia to Arizona, making the mental shift that was required.
Dan had met Amy when she had accidentally stumbled into him at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, causing him to spill his drink. She had bought him a replacement drink and they got to chatting.
She had told him she had moved from Arizona to Philadelphia to help her get over a failed relationship. He had found it easy to talk to Amy and soon she had been attentively listening to his life story, including the unexpected death of his wife Catherine at a very early age due to cancer, following soon after the loss of his parents.
Three years on, he had still been grieving for Catherine and his parents.
He found Amy a companionable young woman, easy to talk to and by the end of the evening they had exchanged phone numbers. A little over a year later, they had married.
Things hadn't been easy for Dan; the early death of his wife had been preceded not long before by the unexpected death of his parents in a car crash.
This had resulted in, at a young age, Dan being virtually forced into taking over the running of the family engineering concern.
That concern was still dealing with the residual fallout of a major family split of a generation before, which had brought about the creation of two engineering outfits in the Philadelphia area that both contained the name "Fisher" in the title. Fisher Productions and Dan's branch, Fisher Engineering Products. Both made pretty much the same type of engineering products, and at least until recently, both of which had enjoyed similar successful stories.
That was then, this was now; and the future of Fisher Engineering Products was hanging by a thread.
When he got back to the office, he asked Wanda to put in the call. She nodded, but the look of concern in her eyes made him understand why he needed the appointment with his accountant. "Hey, Wanda, don't worry" he said. "I'll make sure you are going to be okay, no matter what. After all, you worked here with both my father and grandfather."
She nodded. "Thanks, Dan. I really do appreciate that, but there's everyone in the factory, plus the other staff to think about, too?"
Dan shrugged, sympathetically. "Yeah, Wanda. I know that. I'll do whatever I can, but if Eddy and I can't get a sustainable boost in sales, or manage to figure out what's happening to our sales and correct any issues we find, it'll be out of my hands."
She smiled at him, reassuringly. She knew he'd do what he could for everyone. He was the son of his father, after all. "When do you want the appointment?"
"Try for next Tuesday at 1PM."
"Have you told Amy about the problems we are having?"
"No. At least, not yet. She's doing well with her graphic design business and she's got a major contract coming up, so I didn't want to bother her. She's doing her usual week in Arizona with her aunt who lives in the nursing home. She's her only living relative. She's relatively young, but she has early onset dementia. I've only seen her once, that was years ago. She mistook me for someone else from her past and started screaming and attacking me, so I haven't been allowed to see her, since then."
"By the way, Dan, someone called for you when you were at the airport. Said his name was Peter Hooper of a company called Hooper-Sneed Investigations."
"Sales call?" asked Dan, skeptically.
"He asked me to emphasize that it's not a sales call, that there will be no financial cost implications to you or the company, but he emphasized that he does have some information that he feels will be of great interest and concern to you and the company. If you're interested, I can call him back and put the call through to your office?"
"Might as well find out what he has, so sure, okay, please do that." Dan walked into his office and a couple of minutes later he found himself talking to Peter Hooper of Hooper-Sneed Investigations. "Mr. Fisher? Good morning, my name is Peter Hooper. I am a founding partner of Hooper-Sneed Investigations."
"Good morning, Mr. Hooper. My secretary said you have something of interest for me. Will you please confirm that there are no cost implications to me or Fisher Engineering Products? And if so, how can that be the case?"
"Yes, I'll confirm there are no cost implications for you or your company. How this works is that sometimes during an investigation for a client we discover information that will be of benefit to a third party. Which, in this instance, is you and your company. As this information is, in effect, the property of our client, we are limited by what we can do with this information.
"But in this instance, our client has explicitly instructed us that we must place this information with you as soon as is humanly possible. Our offices are on Walnut Street, near to the junction with South Juniper. When would you be able to come to our offices?"
"How about next week? Monday, perhaps? I'll have my secretary pencil you in?"
There was a pause before Hooper replied. "The thing is, the information my client has for you is very time sensitive. I think it best if we met with you this week. This morning, in fact, before noon, if that's at all possible?"
"Is it really that urgent?"
"Yes. It's very urgent."
"Okay. I'll be at your office just prior to noon. My office is only on Walnut and South Broad Street, so that's not a problem. Incidentally, who is your client?"
"I'll be able to release the name of my client to you when you are at our offices. Sorry to be so mysterious, but there are good reasons to play it this way, as I'm sure you will appreciate when you find out more."
After dealing with the few letters that had arrived in the morning post and sorting through his emails, Dan found himself at the offices of Hooper-Sneed Investigations. It was somewhat more opulent than he had expected. He was ushered into the office marked "Peter Hooper" and Mr. Hooper rose from his desk, strode toward him and shook his hand in a firm but friendly grip.
"Please sit down, Mr. Fisher. I'm Peter Hooper." As Dan sat down in front of Hooper's desk he glanced round the room and noticed that there were a number of FBI commemorations and certificates on the wall, and photographs with a younger Peter Hooper with four different Presidents, taken in what Dan presumed was the Oval Office.
"I spent over 20 years working as an agent for the FBI after law school and four years in the US Marines. Then I got together with a former Philly police detective friend of mine, Wally Sneed, and we opened up our own detective agency."
Dan declined the offer of a drink. He really picked up a bad vibe about what was going to transpire.
