Chapter One – The Invitation
5.
David Manson slid the key into the doorknob, turned it, and pushed the door opening into his three bedroom ranch home. The house rests on a few acres of woods just outside Branson, Missouri. He stepped inside and closed the door. As he walked through the entryway, overhead lights automatically came on following him into the first room on the right, the living room, where he paused and said. “Lights on”. The lamps that were strategically placed in the four corners of the room obeyed his command and snapped on. He set down his briefcase and walked, mail in hand, toward the kitchen on his left and went directly to the refrigerator. The overhead lights blinked on as he withdrew a beer from it, twisted the cap and took a long pull from the bottle. He placed it on the kitchen island, threw the mail on it and sat down. It had been a long day, he thought to himself, as he loosened his tie. Who would have thought reading all day would be so hard? But he knew his job as a legal assistant would be that way at times. He worked with, and for, Bill Schaeffer, in a practice that specialized in property services. A lot of lawsuits in that line of work. He grinned.
He suddenly stood, grabbed the mail, left the kitchen and turning right, and was back in the hallway. More lights blinked on overhead as he passed the dining room, a small bedroom on the left, and the guest bathroom on the right. Ahead of him is the door to a second bedroom where he had set up his office. He turned right into the master bedroom.
“Lights on,” Davis said, habitually, throwing the mail on his bed as he shed his blue suit coat and walked into the closet to the right of the bedroom door. The light in the closet blinked on and revealed similar jackets hanging on his right, crisp white dress shirts on his left, with cubby holes for his shoes placed below them. He hung the jacket using the one empty hanger next to the dark brown one. Walking deeper into the closet, he removed his shirt and hung it next to a similar one over a four drawer dresser sitting against the wall at the end of the closet. He pulled his t-shirt over his head and threw into the basket next to the dresser and sat in the chair on the other side. He removed, first his shoes, then his pants. He stood and hung the pants next to the shirts above the dresser. He stood there and counted the items above the dresser. It was time to take them to the cleaners. He bent to retrieve the shoes and he put them in their cubby hole and left the closet.
Back into the bedroom, he turned to a second, shorter, longer, dresser, with a 54 inch television perched upon it. He opened the first drawer and removed some underwear and white gym socks. He pulled open the second drawer to remove a bright orange t-shirt, and the bottom third drawer to remove a pair of jeans. He turned and threw everything on the bed.
The mail bounced up, rearranged itself, and settled back down next to the clothes. David’s eyes fell on an item in the mail that he hadn’t seen in a while, a brown postcard. He picked it up, turned it over, and sat down to read it.
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