A big thank you for your feedback on Part 2.
I hope you like Part 3 too.
AnnaBtG.
TOC here From Part 2: Lois raised her eyebrows in question. “It could be anything. Maybe we should pay a visit to the Mayor.”
“When?”
“Now,” she proposed.
“All right,” Clark agreed. “Do you know where the house is?”
“Yes,” she said with an air of confidence, rising and grabbing her purse. “We’ll take my car.”
“All right,” he agreed again, rising. “I don’t have one anyway,” he added, in a lower voice.
“What?” Lois asked, thinking she had misheard.
“I said I don’t have a car.”
She gave him a disbelieving look. “And how do you move?”
“On foot,” he said, naturally. “Or I take the bus.”
Lois shook her head, unable to believe that someone living in Metropolis didn’t have a car. “Ok, whatever. Let’s go.”
She waved to him to follow her and they both headed to the elevator.
Part 3: About fifteen minutes later, Lois and Clark were at the Mayor’s house. It wasn’t difficult for Lois to convince the maid to let her in. In fact, she didn’t even have to try.
The house had three floors, a big, flowered garden and was built in stone. Really big and beautiful.
The Mayor’s wife, a woman around 50 years old, quite beautiful, joined them soon in the living room, where they had been waiting.
“Ms. Lane!” She shook hands with Lois. “Nice to see you. And you, Mr….”
“Kent.”
“Oh, well, Mr. Kent.” She shook hands with Clark, too. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, Mrs. Berkowitz, as you can guess, we would like to ask you a few questions about the burglary that took place here a couple of days ago,” Lois explained.
Mrs. Berkowitz look puzzled. “I think you were here that night too, Mrs. Lane, and I told you everything we knew.”
“Yes,” Lois admitted, “but we’re doing some extra research. So, Mrs. Berkowitz, you and your husband were out visiting some friends, and when you came back home you found the house a mess?”
“That’s right.”
“But nothing was missing.”
“Right.”
“Not even a pin?”
“Look, Mrs. Lane, a pin could have been missing. But I checked everything valuable, my jewelry, the money, the art paintings, vases, crystals, and nothing of them was missing.” Mrs. Berkowitz was getting nervous.
“Did you check the safe?” Clark interfered.
“Yes, it was the first thing I checked. It was perfectly fine. The burglar probably didn’t even find it.”
“May I ask where it is?”
“Look, Mr. Kent…”
“I’m just asking to see if the burglar could easily guess it. We’re not going to print it, of course.”
Mrs. Berkowitz hesitated for a few moments, but finally decided to tell him. “It’s in the library, behind some books. Do you want to see it?”
“No, thanks.”
“*Yes, we’d like to*,” Lois cut him, warningly. “May we?”
Mrs. Berkowitz shrugged, and then rose. “Follow me,” she said to the reporters and all together they silently headed to the library. While walking, Lois gave Clark a what-the-hell-were-you-thinking look and he rolled his eyes, getting the message: ‘Never miss an opportunity to find out more.’
“Mrs. Berkowitz,” Lois suddenly said, “hadn’t you said that ‘everything that could be moved was moved?’”
“Yes, and I wasn’t metaphorically speaking.”
“Weren’t the books moved, too?”
“Yes, they were. But the safe door is camouflaged by a wood cover, so that it looks like the wall.” Mrs. Berkowitz was feeling really nervous, thinking that she was telling so much to these curious reporters.
“And what do you keep in your safe, Mrs. Berkowitz?” Clark asked.
“Various things… Some expensive diamond jewels, some money, a few documents…”
They were now in the library. Mrs. Berkowitz moved some books.
“What kind of documents?” Lois asked, interested.
“I don’t really know, they’re my husband’s… contracts and stuff like this.” Mrs. Berkowitz opened the wood cover and showed to Lois and Clark the safe door.
“Can you open it, please?”
“Ms. Lane…”
“We just want to help,” Lois reminded her. “We may be able to do it if you cooperate.”
Clark chuckled in amazement, thinking that, despite her gentle tone, Lois was talking as if she were some kind of criminal. However, he was quite pleased to see that Mrs. Berkowitz was convinced to open the safe. He saw her pressing some buttons and opening the steel door.
Inside the safe there were several velvet jewel cases, money and a few papers.
“May I see the papers?” Lois asked.
Mrs. Berkowitz took them and handed them to Lois. Lois, after taking a quick glance at each one, murmuring something indefinite, handed them one by one to Clark.
After a couple of papers, Clark’s gaze focused on something. Lois turned to him to see why he wasn’t taking the paper she was giving him, and seeing his look, looked at the paper too.
“Is this the contract for this house?” Clark asked Mrs. Berkowitz, showing her the paper he was staring at.
“Yes…” she said.
“How much does this house worth?”
“Very much… Maybe more than 600,000 dollars.”
“And who does it belong to?”
“Me and my husband.”
“This paper is *altered*, Lois,” Clark turned to her partner. “Take a look here. It says ‘Abel and Yvette Thomson’.”
Lois took the paper and had a close look at it. “Maybe it’s incorrect, but it doesn’t look altered at all. The letters look like printed. There’s no difference with the other letters.”
“There *is*, Lois. First of all, the ink is different.”
“It’s not!”
“It *is*! It’s not black, it’s just very very dark blue.”
Lois brought the paper very close to her eyes and examined it carefully for a few moments. “I’m not sure… It looks the same to me.”
“But yes, it is different!” Clark insisted. “And what about the letters? The font is not exactly the same!”
“Clark, are you all right? Can you see any difference between these letters?” Lois asked, angrily. “It’s probably another, *different* paper! It can’t be the same!”
“But yes, Lois, it *is* the same! Take a close look at it! Can’t you see these letters are not exactly the same with the original ones?”
Lois took another close look at the paper, but soon she was handing it back to Clark, angrily. “Frankly, Clark, I think it’s the same.”
Clark turned to Mrs. Berkowitz, who was staring at the two reporters, puzzled. “Do you have a magnificent glass, Mrs. Berkowitz?”
“I think my husband has one. Let me see.” She opened the desk drawer and after a few moments of searching, she found one and gave it to Clark. He dragged Lois close to him and used the glass to magnify the letters. “See, Lois,” he said, “the letters are different.”
“I’m not sure,” Lois insisted on supporting her opinion.
Clark, frustrated, turned on the desk lamp, without even asking for Mrs. Berkowitz permission, and put the paper under the bright light. “Can you see it *now*, Lois?”
“No…” she began indifferently, but then something caught her eye. “Wait!”
She bent over the paper in a way that she wouldn’t prevent the light from lighting it, and took one more close look. “Oh my God, Clark, you’re right, it *is* slightly different… Geez, Clark, you’re *way* sharp-sighted.” She turned to him, and the shy look her comment earned her made her almost laugh. “Well done, Sherlock!”
Clark smiled even more shyly, blushing at Lois’s words, noticing that Mrs. Berkowitz was also staring at him, amazed. “Well,” he said to her, taking a deep breath, “if my theory is correct, the burglar, who either is a counterfeiter or he works with one, came here and altered the contract wanting to use it to prove that this house is his.”
“And they made all this mess just to distract you,” Lois added.
“Incredible!” Mrs. Berkowitz admired.
Just at that moment, the Mayor, Mr. Byron Berkowitz stormed in the room, sighing. “Liz, I need to talk to you.” He turned to the reporters, intending to ask them to leave, but Clark cut him.
“Is it about some guy named Abel Thomson?” he asked in a polite yet determined way.
“Yes…” the Mayor replied, puzzled. “How…”
“…Who happens to claim ownership of this house?” Lois was the one to cut him now.
“Yes…” The Mayor was glaring at the reporters, amazed. “How do you know?”
“Byron, they found out that the contract for our house has been altered.”
“Altered?”
“Yes…” Mrs. Berkowitz took the paper from Lois’s hands and gave it to her husband. “You may notice that these letters have been altered.”
“Someone probably used a dissolver or something to erase the letters without leaving any traces, and wrote other names,” Clark explained. “Very good work.”
“But, Clark,” Lois asked, “it doesn’t make sense! Why would they alter the paper? Although very good work, it’s not perfect! A magnifying glass was enough to reveal it!”
“Once they could claim that the Mayor possessed an original, genuine and signed by a notary document with these names on it, nobody would think of checking the names in the text. They would all examine the signatures, the stamps, the protocol, but not these names.”
“Incredible!” the Mayor exclaimed, as his wife had done a little before.
“Can we assume that we can have the exclusive, Mr. Berkowitz?” Lois asked.
Mr. Berkowitz was still staring at the paper. “What?” he asked, hearing Lois’s voice. “Oh, yes, of course.”
“So, can you tell us what Abel Thomson told you?”
He turned to her. “I had a visit from his attorney, Mr…. Andrews, I think, who informed me that Mr. Thomson and his wife claimed to be the owners of this house. They said that Mrs. Paige Randall, the woman who owned this house, had left it to them as a legacy. But she actually left it to us.”
“So they claim to be relatives of Mrs. Randall?” Clark asked.
“Yes. Apparently, and according to Mr. Andrews, Mrs. Thomson is a ‘distant but beloved’ niece of Mrs. Randall.”
“Mrs. Randall was my mother’s sister,” Mrs. Berkowitz explained. “She had no kids, so my sister and I were like substitutes.”
“Do you know the woman Mr. Berkowitz is talking about?” Lois asked her, and then turned to the Mayor. “What was her name?”
“Yvette Zachs,” he replied.
“Well,” Mrs. Berkowitz replied skeptically, “I do recall a distant cousin named Yvette, but I have no idea what her last name was. It’s been nearly forty years.”
“We are going to inform the police,” Clark said. “Soon they will be arrested. Thank you very much,” he said, shaking hands with the Mayor and then with his wife.
“*We* must thank you,” the Mayor said. “You saved our house. Thank you very much.”
“We have to go now,” Lois said, also shaking hands with the Berkowitz’s. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Berkowitz replied. “I’ll walk you out.”
“No, please, don’t bother.”
“All right. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” they all replied.
“What a case, huh?” Clark commented, once they were out of the house.
“I’ve seen many weird cases,” Lois replied, “but this was really unique. I can’t believe how you saw these flaws on the paper!”
Clark almost blushed. “I am very sharp-sighted. But there are other things I’m not so good at.”
“Like what? As far as I’ve seen, you’re…”
“Lois! Wait!”
-----
Lois instinctively turned around, and saw a red car coming towards her in a fast speed. She froze, her eyes wide opened, but then a strong hand pulled her back on the sidewalk.
“Lois, are you all right? Didn’t you see the car? Lois?”
It was Clark’s voice, full of anxiety. It made her realize that she was still motionless, with that look of surprised horror in her eyes. She blinked and shook her head.
“I’m fine, Clark, thanks,” she said, her hand on her forehead. “I was just careless, I guess…”
“Lois, you could’ve been killed!”
“I know… I don’t know what happened to me. I guess I was distracted.”
She turned to look at him, and saw that he was looking at her. Then, he moved his head slightly, staring at something indefinite behind her. Something had dawned in his eyes.
“Clark?” It was her turn to be worried.
“Huh? Oh, sorry.” He still sounded a little distracted. “I… I need to see my parents.”
“Do you want me to drop you there?”
“Huh? Oh, no,” he finally said, turning back to her. “My parents live in Smallville.”
“Smallville?” she asked, giving him an incredulous look.
“Yes. It’s in Kansas.”
Lois raised her eyebrows and slightly grimaced. This was weird… *Smallville*?
It hadn’t even occurred to her that he could be from another city… town… village… oh, well.
“And how are you going to go to Smallville?”
“No, I’m not going to go there,” he said, smiling in uneasiness. “I’ll just call them.”
“Yes, of course. Are we going to the Planet now?”
“Yes, sure.”
As they were standing outside the car, Lois remembered something. “You are very strong, aren’t you? You pulled me with just one hand!”
Once again, he smiled shyly.
<He’s not one to be complimented,> Lois thought. <He nearly blushes every time.> She smiled in her thoughts. <I can’t believe there are still men like him… Maybe it’s the Smallville touch.>
“I work out a lot,” he managed to say, before they got in the car.
-End of part 3-
