The Secret World of Ophelia Fontaine

Part Two - Never simple

Never in his life had he followed someone as boring as Ophelia Fontaine. Saying that the woman was predictable was an understatement. On Wednesday, she left work at six in the evening, went to a small café around the around the corner to grab a light dinner, then went home. On Thursday and Friday, it was the same. Her life was a rinse and repeat scenario.

She lived in an Italianate style brown stone within the Carroll Garden district of Brooklyn. The neighborhood was quiet and the community tight, which prevented him from lingering too often and for too long. Nosy neighbors were not friends of his and made his business pursuits more complicated then otherwise necessary. If they had been in  a more cluttered area of New York, his prolonged surveillance could go on uninterrupted. So he followed her home and continued on with his investigation elsewhere.

A few conversations with servers at the café she ate at each night had revealed little of interest. She ate there every weeknight, always alone, and continually ordered the special. This was quickly becoming the most boring investigation he had ever conducted. Only the promise of a substantial pay day that could make things in his life worth living once again gave him the motivation to continue on.

At the hour of midnight, he circled around and parked across the street beside the old episcopal church on the corner of Clinton and Carroll. There were no lights on at home, so he assumed that the Miss Frumpy, as he had come to call her in his mind, had gone of to bed to rest up for an uneventful weekend. He could not see her getting wild in a bar on a Saturday night.

He grabbed the folded profile sheet that Mr. Brackenridge had given him from the mess of papers piled on his passenger seat. He unfolded it and used his flashlight to go over the information for the millionth time, futilely hoping to find something he had missed.

 Ophelia Rose Fontaine was twenty three years of age with dark brown hair and had one brown eye and one green eye. She was born in Brooklyn, New York to Erica Marie Moss and Henry Joseph Fontaine. Her mother had died two days after her birth due to complications, and her father had died last year from heart failure. She had no criminal record, not even a parking ticket. She stood at five feet six inches and weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds.

She had a bachelor of business administration degree from some online college and had worked for two other companies prior to becoming employed at Granger. He had stopped by the law firm that had first employed her at the age of twenty and asked her replacement a few questions. The girl had praised her predecessor. Apparently, Miss Frumpy had stayed an extra two weeks to train her and the two had become close during that brief period. The young blond had spoken highly of Miss Frumpy's intelligence and patience. There were a few times that Darien wondered if they were discussing the same woman.

At her second job, another, though vastly smaller, technology firm in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, he had found out little. The founder of the company, a young man no older than twenty five, had agreed that Ophelia had indeed worked there as a secretary of sorts, but had not been too inclined to share any more than that. Suspicious, Darien had tried to dig up more on the company, but there was not much to find. Esprit D'escalier was a small digital marketing firm with only a dozen staff members. Many of their clients were startup businesses within Dumbo or close to its boundaries. I appeared harmless enough.

Just then a taxi cab pulled up just ahead of him, its intrusive headlights making him duck for cover. After a few minutes passed, the taxi pulled away, passing by him. Darien peeked over his dashboard to see a woman dressed in a cloak and jaunty hat ascend the staircase to 194 Carroll Street; the home of Ophelia Fontaine.

The woman unlocked the door using a key and entered the row house without a backward glance. Intrigued, Darien watched the windows of the four story brownstone until the window on the third floor became illuminated. The silhouette could be seen through the gossamer drapes; a female figure in the process of stripping down. Darien watched the shadow, feeling slightly like some perverted stalker. The hourglass figure danced its way into his imagination, conjuring up images that left him feeling frustrated and fairly aroused.

Fighting the urge to ease his suffering with shameful self gratification, Darien laid back in his seat and closed his eyes. He refocused his thoughts on the questions that needed to be answered. Was the mysterious woman Miss Frumpy? If so, where had she gone? It had to be around four in the morning now. It was a good thing that he had remained awake, otherwise he would have missed this development. Luck was on his side at least, for his simple job had just taken a twist. Evidently, nothing was ever as simple as it seemed.