Bits of life

A-9 Words-1050

and set him on trail to find more information about the friendship between Tim and Edwardo, the other guy. I rang John to come over for the meeting. He will be here any minute now,” said Mr. Anderson and stopped to relax a while before Luke turned up.

Ten minutes later Luke came over and all the three of us moved to an antechamber located near the manager’s office. Luke looked quite happy which might be an indication of some breaking news in linking the forger to John’s cheques. He came to the point straight away without wasting time.

“I think we might have arrived at the last of the jigsaw pieces to fall in place. This person Tim is not as clean as he appears. He lost his job because he had mishandled the funds of the firm for which he was working. He was in the loans and salaries section of the firm. He was good at book keeping. Taking undue advantage of his key position, Tim manipulated the records and pocketed a lot of money that belonged to the firm. Although the administration finally detected the missing funds, they couldn’t prove a thing against him. So they simply fired him and didn’t drag him to the court of law. That is Tim’s background. The next question is how he comes into our picture. I am coming to that point. Tim and Edwardo were together for a long time. They knew each other since their school days. Crooks of the same kind come together. They leaned on each other whenever they needed help with regard to their illegal dealings. Forgery is one of Edwardo’s many talents. Even as a teenager, Edwardo was helping in shady tasks using bullying tactics on those who didn’t obey him at school. His family consisted of a mentally deranged mother and sister who roamed the streets aimlessly. So Edwardo is the only breadwinner in the family. He completely dropped out of school when he was offered a job in one of the extortion mafias of the town. Since then he had no dearth of work and so his finances did better. Tim had gone to him when he embezzled money from his firm. He needed fake signatures on important documents belonging to the staff of the firm for which he was working. Besides Tim, Edwardo has other contacts, one of them was with the owners of the casino frequented by Jake and Oliver. When they brought the stolen cheques to the loan shark who is a henchman of the owners of the casino, he kept the cheques and contacted Edwardo. John’s signature was to be forged in the necessary places on them. The original was supplied to them by Oliver. He got hold of an old document that belonged to John with his signature on it which helped the forger as a model. So friends, this is the end of this tale with many twists, which finally saw the puzzling points being solved. I am also happy that luck favored me in nabbing the culprits.”

Luke concluded his report and we felt a kind of relief because finally, the whole mystery was solved. I was also happy that with reason and right contacts and a little bit of luck, we got the answers.
Uncle John thanked Cathy for her timely help and invited her over to his country home. Cathy blushed daintily, and said “Thank you.”
“I will give you a ring as soon as we finish with the grape harvest, which is currently on at our vineyards, ” said Uncle John.
“Oh, grape harvesting! That must be a wonderful experience to watch the process and followed later by wine extraction,” exclaimed Cathy.
“If you like to see the procedure of grape picking and wine-making, I can take you to my place in a week’s time,” said uncle John quite promptly.
“Oh, thank you. I will be happy to do that,” replied Cathy smiling at him. “There is going to be summer break for the bank for a week,” she continued.
“OK then, that’s fixed.”

Then he turned to me and said “Say Jim, I have an idea. Why don’t you and mom pick up Cathy and come over during the next weekend?” asked uncle John. I took a moment before replying. For quite sometime Mom was considering the idea of going to the old country home where she spent her childhood years and girlhood times. This might be chance for her and refresh her memories of her dad mom and her siblings and other dear neighbors and revisit some of her childhood haunts in and around the old house. It had been more than two decades since she last visited the old home. After the fall out between the brothers and sisters regarding the division of property of my grandfather, she stopped her annual visits to the country home. Except for John her relationship with Rod and Jeremiah remained formal and superficial. I was sure she would consider going to her maternal home this once. This might be a really a great chance for her to have change of scenery and weather as well. I knew for sure, she was not the person to keep old differences and nurse them on and on. She believed in the adage “forgive and forget.”

“OK uncle. That’s great. We will talk to mom about your idea and see how she reacts to it. I will let you know in a couple of days. By them I will also come to know if I am going to be busy during the weekend or free to use the holiday,” I replied rather sensibly. My intention in asking for time was actually to discuss with my mother whether she liked the idea of going to her father’s home even it was for a short while.

Then we left for home. Mom and Jonathan were waiting for us to join them for lunch. Uncle John told his sister about the findings. My mother was absolutely happy about the way things were settled.
“So John my baby brother, congratulations on finding the culprits, and getting them behind bars. It might be time for you to settle in and settle down to married life,” she said with characteristic ease.
It was