Beginnings - The Price of Murder

The Price of Murder
Mathew Steeson Jr maintained a tiny clock shop on Turpine Boulevard in the center of Hidden Cove’s historic shopping district. The shop was unimpressive, one might even say forgettable. It sat, pressed between a chain convenience store and a seafood restaurant, called “Seaweed Pete,” the front of which had been constructed to look like the gang plank of an 1800's pirate sailing ship.

The clock shop was nothing more then a narrow room running lengthwise into the bowels of the building. The two side walls of the shop were adorned with clocks of every imaginable shape and size. At the far end of the room and running nearly the length of the rear wall sat a nondescript white Formica counter top resting on a smudged glass display case. Inside the display case sat additional glass shelves with more clocks scattered indiscriminately.

A small point of sale machine sat on one corner of the counter. A solitary wooden door painted white stood directly behind. The door led to a storage closet and a small bathroom which accommodated a chipped porcelain pedestal sink and toilet.

The front window was clouded a pale mud color from a weathered coating of sun reflective film. The frail wooden door held the same sun treatment which obscured a thin plastic sign displaying the store’s oddly random hours of operation.

Yes, Mathew Steeson, Jr. was rarely at the clock shop. If he were to be honest with the random window shopper who found him behind the counter, he would have admitted that he knew very little about clocks, cared even less. He had convinced the stocky yet diminutive landlord to agree to a ten year lease on the property by promptly producing a neat stack of crisp 100’s and placing them, ever so deliberately, under the landlord’s nose. The man greedily rifled through the bills like playing cards and agreed on the spot to the terms prompted by Mr. Steeson. He hadn’t been seen near the clock shop since.

The only constant visitor to the shop was the mailman. He had never actually met Mr. Steeson. He had never found the shop open when arriving with the mail. He couldn’t even say if the mail was ever received. He simply followed the same routine any time mail came for the small shop. He would step to the door and feed the letters one by one through a narrow slot marked mail well below the window. He would occasionally peer through the window for lights or movement or to see where the letters had fallen.

Over the years, the mailman couldn’t help but notice the widely varied post marks on the letters, all simply addressed to “the clock shop”. The letters seemed to come from all over the world. The letters were all uniformly thin but varied in size and color. None carried a return address visible on the face. None gave any hints to the secrets inside. And it was a good thing that the mailman maintained a fairly strong case of indifference. For if he were able to read one of these seemingly plain everyday letters, the letters that he delivered diligently, he would have learned significantly more about the absent Mr. Steeson and he would have discovered one more very curious piece of information…. The price of murder!