by Nenny May
Business had hit a drywall since the passing of Christopher Campbell. He’d been dead for a month. Thirty days. That was a long time for a woman’s husband to be buried, and yet, it was becoming increasingly clear he’d had a hands-on roll to play in the business she thought she was running on her own.
She’d played herself. Conned herself into believing she, with only a high-school degree could run a business. Pathetic.
How hadn’t she read the fine print? He’d surprised her with a business, the store had already been registered and everything!
At the time, she’d been convinced he’d created it for her.
He was dead and she could tell this was a business he was manipulating to drive sales.
The problem? He hadn’t bothered to mention what he was doing to drive sales and she was blank.
She didn’t know what to do or who to call for help.
What had begun with less than a handful of dissatisfied customers had mutated into a drastic reduction in her daily client in flow.
Two counterfeit products and an outburst by her teenage son and she was out of business? Blake Campbell nibbled on her bottom lip. This couldn’t have anything to do with her business being associated with a dead-man… could it?
If anything, Christopher Campbell’s passing should have attracted sympathy clients.
It wasn’t a secret she wasn’t too welcome in her home town. She’d heard the rumors, people hated her decision to drop out of school, to marry a man that could have been her father. In the eyes of the locals, she was a skank. She had a feeling that had a part to play in her dry store.
Day-in and day-out, she’d sent Paul to school and returned to her day job and sat behind a swollen polished mahogany desk in a once clustered antique store. But she hadn’t been alone.
If there was anyone who still had faith in her and in Campbell’s Antiques… it wasn’t her friends, it was Katherine Tapper.
She had opted to intern at Campbell’s Antiques. She was the daughter of Christopher Campbell’s ex-wife after their sloppy divorce.
A good person at heart, Blake hadn’t been able to turn the teenage girl away. What was she going to do tell her to seek employment elsewhere? There were only a handful of places taking in interns.
It wasn’t as if there was much to do at Campbell’s Antiques, the business practically ran itself… in the beginning that is.
Aside from restocking the shelves and polishing the marble countertops and display surfaces, there wasn’t much to do.
And with sales on park, there wasn’t any need to restock since nothing had been sold.
Starting a business hadn’t been her idea on the onset. She’d been content playing the role of a housewife, the role her mother, Mary Slaughter had reminded her time and time again that best suited her.
“You’re supposed to please a man, not compete with him,” She’d been told growing up and… she was good at pleasing men… not that she’d confided in her mother that she’d gotten a head start on the activities of a wife beforehand.
The boys at her school loved her cooking, and adored her… extracurricular skills. And she longed for the praise.
She wasn’t business smart; she didn’t even go to college. She didn’t know numbers as well as her friends Faith Thompson and Patricia Hartley. They were great at it! She’d always envied them, she knew she was getting duped at those overpriced restaurants, and they’d protected her from it, they’d always handled the numbers and bills, she just handed the money over to them.
Faith was more street smart; they’d met in Twelfth grade Chemistry class. Patricia was all numbers and had helped Blake out with her math homework until graduation.
Though both girls had gone off to college, and Blake had met and married Christopher Campbell, they’d kept in touch and managed to be there when she needed them the most.
A time she couldn’t forget had to be the day phones were normalized. Christopher had gone into a fit, he hadn’t been comfortable with his wife owning one.
“You think I’ll call other men is that it?” She’d spat in his scrunched-up face. To her, he’d always looked like an angry cat, the animated effect was only enhanced by his chunky size. He was nowhere near overweight. He wasn’t underweight either. He was somewhere in the middle, with a huggable ‘dad-body’. He hadn’t dignified her outburst with an answer. And when she’d relayed this to Faith and Patricia over lunch the following afternoon, they’d been agitated with him.
“Surely, he can’t be convinced you’ll be disloyal, I mean he spoils you way too much,” Faith had said, pushing her scrambled eggs around her plate with a fork. Was that all they saw? The money he spent on her?
She shook her head.
They’d perched by the window-seats of a café on 6th, Mocha on the Rocks. It was closest to Faith’s home a couple blocks down. The afternoon sun had spilled through the thin glass and onto their table. “It’s not just that,” Blake rose to her husband’s defense. Sure, the money was an added advantage, but he wasn’t just money. He was…corny jokes, warm hugs and advice she never got growing up.
She wasn’t going to tell them the pitiful story of how she’d been raised by a single mother, or how she’d been pushed on this path to prevent making the same mistakes Mary Slaughter had. She didn’t think they would care too much for it.
“Then what?” Patricia looked up from her own phone. Of course, the both of them had gotten a pair, they always seemed to get the latest anything once it came out. There was a time a new dress was released by Prada and both girls had argued over who would get it.
“He knows about the glances we get when we’re out and,” Blake leaned in, as if there were people listening. No one was listening. The café was almost empty, not many people could afford the items on the menu. “He hasn’t said anything but I know he’s worried I’ll leave him for someone younger.”
“Will you?” Faith had asked.
Even after Christopher’s passing, even as she sat beneath the florescent lights of her very own store, Katherine reorganizing the new arrivals, she didn’t have an answer to her friend’s question. Would she have left Christopher Campbell for a younger man?
She flipped the page of the magazine between her dainty fingers. She couldn’t seem to concentrate on the hungry leggy models in skimpy clothing.
Katherine had read the stories, Christopher’s opinion on the articles bubbling to the surface, he hadn’t sat at bay and let the media shred his wife to pieces. He’d taken to the papers confessing that he hadn’t married her for her cooking or her body, though he’d sang praises in her name for both, he’d been convinced she was more than her works in the kitchen and bedroom. She was smart and even if she couldn’t see it, he saw it for her. And so, in an interview with Tillamook Daily Champion, he’d confessed introducing her to Campbell’s Antiques.
And business had been booming in the years leading onto his passing. Business was yet to take the plunge when Katherine had been hired as an intern at Campbell’s Antiques.
In another article released the following week, it was headlined; Blake Campbell Empowered and interviewed the controversial twenty-seven-year-old wife who’d with time grown to love their dynamic. The mornings were ‘emboldening’, she’d told Tillamook Daily, she would brew his morning cup of joe and prepare Christopher for his day at Campbell’s House of Timber. Once he was gone, she would get Paul ready for school and get dressed for her day at Campbell’s Antiques.
Those days, she’d admitted, she’d felt empowered as a woman. She’d felt as though there was more to life than sitting at home and reading parenting books on how to properly raise Paul. He was a good enough boy; he didn’t need her to shadow him and live her life around him.
In a matter of weeks, in a pursuing article by Tillamook Times, Blake Campbell had been named Tillamook’s most influential business woman. A title many disputed. She had a husband that brought the world to her feet, a job that many envied and the perfect son.
Blak
e heaved a sigh, her shoulders falling.
Katherine hadn’t noticed it before, but she’d been staring at her boss. She returned to the restroom. Blake had left her on bathroom duty. Even though no one had been in their store for days, Blake had insisted the bathrooms smell like fresh-picked lilacs.
She hadn’t done all she could with the bathrooms. She could use to get out of Blake Campbell’s hair.
With only a high-school degree, Katherine mused leaning against the porcelain sink. Blake had become yet again more popular than her peers that had mocked her for not wanting to seek a higher education.
Blake wasn’t a dreamer, a high achiever, she was Blake Campbell and the woman always seemed to be content with that.
The days after Christopher’s passing… weren’t so lucrative.
Why weren’t there people in the store? In Katherine’s opinion, Blake had designed the place well enough, the walls, a welcoming shade of egg white, the floors, a corresponding shade of marble. Metal shelves lined the entrance and display tables had been erected to showcase her most expensive products. To Katherine, the place looked chic!
She could recall in the beginning, it was the place, for pictures and quality antiques, now it was that place, and from what it seemed people had been there and done that… If that was the case, she would have to find the next ‘it’ place to work.
She needed the money. She couldn’t be loyal to a company that didn’t have a future.
A bell chimed; they had a customer! Her heart caught in her throat and Katherine had darted to the bathroom door and cracked it open, her gaze on the man by the door, the familiar man by the door, her shoulders fell, disappointment and fear cloaked her in a coat.
“Still as beautiful as ever, Princess,” Richard Dean had said letting himself into the store with all the confidence in the world. Not only was he a handsome young man, but he’d managed to make a name for himself in half the time Christopher had. Katherine knew of Richard Dean. He was trouble, and he was in their store.
Blake however was determined to see the better half of the man Tillamook dreaded.
◆◆◆
“Wait, wait, if he was trouble, what was he doing in your store?” Amanda Hampton interjected. She’d been sitting pin-straight, staring at both Katherine Tapper and Frank’s camera lens. The woman had done a magnificent job at painting a vivid picture for their story. And Annabelle had struggled with every bone in her body not to display her pearly whites. The tone of their interview was glum even if she knew this was going to save her job.
She’d asked her questions, but Amanda had stolen the spotlight… As always.
She couldn’t wait to get this story to Simon Neil, who hadn’t pulled her out of probation. Her job was still on the line until she could find a way to get those ratings to skyrocket. He was yet to get back to her on what the studio had aired.
It was hard, not reaching for her phone, but she’d kept her eyes on Katherine Tapper and cowered beneath Amanda’s shadow letting the News Anchor do her thing in front of the camera.
“We’re getting to that,” Katherine said, leaning back in the armchair by the window. “In any case…”
◆◆◆
“Don’t call me that,” Blake had said. She returned to the magazines she’d already flipped through.
Richard had been in awe of the modern spacious décor enhanced by the ancient products she had on display. She loved her late husband, but one of the things that had drawn her to him had been his success. Not the money, but the fact that he’d pulled his life together.
“I will call you that, because, it suits you.” He joined her by the front desk.
“Whatever,”
“Slow day?” He glanced over his shoulder, the room was crisp, a silence running through it.
“Slow week,” She shrugged. “I’m not good at this business thing, but I have to make it work, Paul needs to go to school, he needs to eat… it’s a lot,”
She couldn’t say she’d been prepared for the whole parenting thing. She’d expected it, she was married and couldn’t avoid it forever. her mother Mary had anticipated it too… the needy woman always nagged a twenty-one-year-old Blake for grandchildren, at the time Blake hadn’t been thinking of having kids, she’d yearned to relish in the married life and all it promised. and when Blake had taken in, she hadn’t been ready.
Getting pregnant and posing for maternity shoots was one thing, but raising another human being was another.
“I can imagine,”
“I doubt it,” She flipped through a pair of pumps the old Blake Campbell would have run to Christopher to buy for her. She couldn’t do that anymore.
Buy things at will…
Or run to Christopher Campbell.
He was gone and she needed to make peace with that.
“Well, my mother is hosting a charity banquet and I need a… date, a plus one and I usually hate these things but you could make some connections to get business off the ground.” He babbled looking around. She nearly chuckled at the way his cheeks had flushed.
“That counts as marketing, right?” She rose to her feet.
“Yes, it counts as marketing, my mom works with a lot of influential people… people like Christopher,” She’d deliberated his words. People like Christopher meant people that could keep Campbell’s Antiques afloat. She would do whatever it took. She had a son to look after, she couldn’t afford to be picky. “So, you in?”
She smiled and nodded, “count me in!”
◆◆◆
“And do you have any idea where we can find this man?” Annabelle Dawson leaned forward in her seat.
Katherine shook her head solemnly. “He’s dead.”
Annabelle’s head snapped in Frank’s direction. The cameras were still rolling.
She was sure as hell going to keep her job.
◆◆◆
It was farfetched. The concept of Paul Campbell masterminding the murder of his mother. Especially since he’d sought her guidance.
But ever since the idea had flapped across her mind, she hadn’t been able to shake it off. It was there when she’d dropped Julie off and returned to her two-bedroom. He had the opportunity. He knew the house better then anyone. As water cascaded down her chunky generous body—She wasn’t fat by a long shot, even if Nora liked to teaser that she was piling on the pounds. She was generously sized with a waist that many desired and a chest she was proud of—during her after-work shower, she’d entertained a mental image of Paul jabbing a kitchen knife through his mother’s chest.
Preparing her late dinner of Couscous hadn’t been any better. She’d been conflicted. A part of her saw the Paul she’d spoken to as a patient. The burdened man, the broken son. And another part, saw a killer creating an alibi.
Fueled by this, she’d shoved her plates in the dishwasher and dove head first into a study on schizophrenia and how it affected children raised around it. She looked into the Campbell family, lulled by Paul’s voice replaying from her phone’s recorder.
She’d read on a study conducted on forty-five participants raised by healthy caretakers and schizophrenic ones. The results were uneven where the impact of the mental illness was less than she would have anticipated. But even still, the numbers weren’t zero and for that reason, she knew there was a chance Blake Campbell’s upbringing could have had a part to play in Paul Campbell’s behavior.
If indeed he was behind the heinous end Blake Campbell met, Lisa would peg it as a disgruntled son seeking retaliation for his rather unusual training.
He had after all demonstrated his disdain at her office.
Her phone shrieked. She reached for it.
When Julie had said she would talk to her sister Regan, one, Lisa had forgotten who her sister was and two, Lisa hadn’t been anticipating a call to her line in the dead of the night.
She hadn’t been sleepy. Not in the slightest. Not with what she’d conversed with Paul Campbell still lurching about in her head. In all honesty, she
hadn’t attempted to place her head on the pillow. She was sure sleep would deny a visit to her.
Though sleep hadn’t had her on its roster, she couldn’t deny she was dead tired.
She’d been at the kitchen table, her laptop the only other light in the room aside the overhead dining light. Her home much like her office was in pristine condition. It was easy to maintain, everything she took out she put back and everything she made use of she cleaned. And for what it was worth, it wasn’t a big home.
It had everything she needed, however, a living room, two petite bathrooms, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. Whenever her mother Nora Patterson would visit, the guest bedroom was hers. Although it didn’t have the tacky picture frames Nora carried around to spice up the bland room, it was still decorated to Lisa Patterson’s satisfaction. White walls against dark wooden floorboards, an arm chair had been perched by the door, a grey-knit blanket thrown over the headrest, a yellow and white striped throw pillow leaned against the left arm. The bed was king sized, the end tables had been on sale, half off.
The dining room was between the kitchen and living room, a single table she’d gotten off Target and two chairs. She’d done much of the renovation of the home on her own with color palettes she’d found off the internet and wallpapers and paints she’d got on a sale on Amazon.
Lisa had been in a relative silence, soothed by a low burning lavender candle, putting together her conversation with Mr. Campbell. Pulling simultaneously, research for a motive. If Mr. Campbell’s mother had forced him to live with their ‘father’ long after his passing, Paul Campbell couldn’t have been too pleased with her. She could imagine having to grow up with a schizophrenic mother. It ought to have taken a toll on him and in a rouse to rid himself of that life he’d snapped, offed her after Christmas, returned to Portland, the drive wouldn’t be too long as he’d claimed, at best an hour, an hour and half with traffic.
