Handle With Restraint

Brandon

~Monday, February 5th

The Harrison Brothers Investigations office was warm when I stepped in from the cold, though my ears still stung from the walk upstairs. Our office sat above the hardware store on Main Street in Marshall, Minnesota, the town my brothers and I had grown up in. Through the window, I could see bare trees and part of the square. Caleb and I had only recently moved back, but Tyler had lived here for most of his life. It was good to be home, even if I could have done without the bitter cold.

I flipped on the lights before stepping over to the coffee maker. We opened in January, and the office was still pretty bare. Three desks, a locking file cabinet, and a couch that looked tougher than it actually was filled the single room. I got a pot going before sliding my jacket off and hanging it on the back of my desk chair. The smell of brewing coffee slowly filled the office as I rubbed a hand over my short beard and got ready to sit down.

The door opened, and my oldest brother, Tyler, stepped inside and flipped the sign from closed to open. At forty-four, he had some gray coming in at the sides of his dishwater-blond hair, but the rest of him hadn’t changed much. He was tall and muscular, with the same honey-colored eyes and familiar facial structure Caleb and I shared. His cheeks were clean-shaven and pink from the cold, and he wore jeans and boots beneath his winter coat, much like I did.

“Morning, B.”

“Morning. How did your drop-off go?”

“Good. Dylan and Rusty were ready to go work out before school, and Nora took Blake since I was already at the gym.”

“Ah.”

“How about you?”

“Elle really likes her new daycare class. She was ready to go play with the other kids. She barely said bye to me. Seth, on the other hand, clung to me and almost refused to go with his teacher.”

“That’s hard.”

“Yeah. He’ll get used to her, though.”

Seth was almost two, and a month at daycare hadn’t been enough for him to get comfortable with everyone. This morning, he had tucked his face against my neck and tightened his arms around me when his teacher approached. I hadn’t wanted to hand him over and leave while he reached for me, so I stayed and helped him find something to do.

“Did you get him settled before you left?” Tyler asked.

“Eventually. His teacher brought some toys over, and I sat with him until he got interested.”

“And then you escaped?”

“Pretty much. I kept expecting to hear him cry before I got out the door.”

Tyler smiled. “You would’ve gone right back.”

“Probably.”

Taking those extra minutes was one of the things I liked about the career change. As a state trooper, I hadn’t had nearly as much control over my schedule. Now, if Sabrina or the kids needed me, I could make time for them. I still got to help people, too. So far, opening the agency felt like a good decision, even if we were spending more time drinking coffee than investigating anything.

Tyler slipped his coat off and set it on his chair before pouring himself a cup of coffee and sitting down. After more than fifteen years as a game warden here in Marshall, he knew plenty of people around town. Hopefully, a few of them would remember us when they needed an investigator. So far, getting the word out about the business was taking some time.

I got up, filled my cup, and sat back down, wrapping my hands around the warm ceramic before taking a slow, glorious sip of liquid heaven.

The office door opened, bringing in another cold breeze. It had to be twenty degrees out there that morning. My other brother, Caleb, slipped inside and quickly closed the door, his boots thudding against the floor.

“Morning, you two,” Caleb said.

“Morning,” Tyler and I said.

“What took you so long?” Tyler asked.

“I would love to see you get two teenage girls out of the house on time,” Caleb answered, shaking his head.

We both snorted in amusement. At forty-two, Caleb looked more like Tyler than he did me, right down to the dishwater-blond hair, though he had less gray coming in. All three of us were tall and muscular, but I was the youngest and the only one with dark brown hair. Our eyes usually gave away the family connection, even when someone didn’t know our last name.

“I don’t ever have to worry about that,” Tyler said with a happy smile.

Tyler had a house full of boys. His son, Dylan, and Nora’s sons, Rusty and Blake, kept him busy, but teenage girls weren’t something he had to worry about. I frowned into my cup of coffee. Sabrina and I still had a few years before our daughter, Elle, reached that stage, but I wasn’t looking forward to it.

“Lucky you. I told Harper that we needed to get them up earlier.”

“Then just get them up earlier,” Tyler told him.

“Oh, I’m going to. The boys weren’t impressed with them either.”

Between Caleb’s son and daughter, Raiden and Grace, and his wife Harper’s two, Archer and Olivia, they had four teenagers to get out the door. Their little boys, Torin and Kieran, were twins. I wasn’t sure how they managed all of those kids sometimes.

Caleb made a cup of coffee before moving to his desk. He set his cup down, shrugged out of his coat, and draped it over his chair, leaving him in a casual winter shirt and jeans. We really needed a coat rack in here and something more than a map on the wall.

The three of us sat there talking about yesterday’s Pro Bowl game while sipping coffee. We were getting ready for Super Bowl Sunday at our parents’ house with all of our families, which would be considerably louder than our morning in the office.

After a while, Caleb opened the case file on his desk. Out of the three of us, he was the only one with an investigation at the moment. His client was Mrs. Heidi Carlson, who suspected her husband of infidelity. Caleb had been in the Army before becoming a Border Patrol agent, and I had worked as a state trooper. Between our backgrounds and Tyler’s years as a game warden, we had plenty of experience investigating people. We just needed clients.

“So what do you have so far?” I asked, leaning on my desk.

“I know where Mr. Carlson works, I have his schedule, and I know what he drives. I need to follow him at lunch and then after he gets off work.”

I nodded. He didn’t know much yet, but he had only gotten the case at the end of last week.

“We need a TV in here,” Tyler said before getting up for another cup of coffee.

“Yeah. A little noise other than you talking would be great,” Caleb muttered.

I stifled my laughter and looked out the window. These two were always at it.

“Dick,” Tyler said as he threw a little red stirring straw at Caleb, hitting him in the side of the face.

I couldn’t hold it back and laughed at them. Caleb just shook his head.

The three of us settled down after a while and handled paperwork while waiting for another case to walk through the door. The coffee maker occasionally sputtered behind us, and the sound of traffic drifted up from Main Street.

I opened the agency’s Facebook page and looked over the few posts we had made since opening. We needed to give people more than our name and a phone number if we wanted them to trust us with their problems.

“I’m going to write an introduction for the Facebook page,” I said.

“To us or the business?” Caleb asked.

“Both. Let people know who we are and what we can help with.”

“Mention where we are,” Tyler said. “Someone asked me the other day.”

“Our address is on there.”

“Above the hardware store, B. Nobody needs to look up the address if you tell them that.”

I added it to the draft. He had a point.

“I can talk to some people around town this week,” he continued. “Let them know we’re open.”

“We should give you something to leave with them,” Caleb said. “Flyers and business cards.”

“I can put something together after this,” I said.

“I’ll look into getting them printed,” Caleb offered. “And what it would cost to put an ad in the newspaper.”

With Tyler talking to people, Caleb handling print advertising, and me working on social media, we could reach more people than we had so far. Sitting upstairs waiting for someone to discover us wasn’t going to keep the business going.

“What are you writing about me?” Tyler asked.

“That you have more than fifteen years of experience as a game warden.”

“Good. Make me sound impressive.”

“I could leave out the part where you threw a stirring straw at Caleb.”

“That would help,” Caleb said.

Tyler grinned and leaned back in his chair while I kept typing. I wrote about our backgrounds and the experience we brought to the agency, then added our contact information and office hours. It took a few tries to make it sound like an introduction instead of three job applications.

“Let me read this to you,” I said.

They listened while I read the draft aloud. Caleb suggested moving the phone number higher, and Tyler wanted me to make it clear that people could stop by the office. I made the changes, checked it once more, and posted it.

“Now we need a picture of the three of us,” I said.

Tyler looked down at his shirt. “You could’ve mentioned that before I got dressed.”

“You look fine.”

“Give him a minute to fix his hair,” Caleb said.

I shook my head while Tyler ran a hand through it anyway. We moved to the couch, and I propped my phone on the desk across from it, checking that all three of us fit in the frame before setting the timer.

“Try to look like someone people would trust,” I told them.

“That directed at him or me?” Caleb asked.

“Both.”

I sat down beside them just before the phone took the picture. It took another two tries to get one where we were all looking at the camera, but it turned out well enough to add to the post. Once it was uploaded, we returned to our desks. Caleb checked advertising rates for the newspaper while Tyler worked on his list of local businesses, and I started putting together a flyer he could take with him.

Before lunch, Caleb left to follow his client’s husband, and Tyler went to grab food for the two of us while I held down the fort.

I sat in the quiet office and pulled out my phone to send a message to my wife, Sabrina. She had been working at the elementary school for a month now, and I liked hearing how her day was going when she had a chance to answer.

“How’s your day going so far?”

“Really good. These kids are amazing. How’s everything at the office?”

“Slow but not bad.”

“With some time, I’m sure it will get busy.”

“Yeah.”

I looked at my reply and typed another message before setting the phone down.

“What do you want to do for dinner?”

“I was hoping you knew.”

“I asked first.”

“That doesn’t make you exempt from deciding.”

I smiled at the screen. We could manage two kids, new jobs, and a move back to my hometown, but figuring out what to eat every night gave us trouble.

“I’ll see what we have when I get home.”

“Thank you. One less thing for me to think about.”

“You can thank me later.”

“Depends on what you make.”

Right after I read her message, the office door opened, and a woman stepped inside. She was short and plump, with blonde hair framing a pretty, heart-shaped face. Her blue eyes moved around the room before settling on me, and she hesitated near the door. I didn’t recognize her, so I stood and offered her a polite smile.

“Hi. I’m Brandon Harrison. Can I help you with something?”

“I hope so. My name is Kendra Dahl, and I need help with a sticky situation,” she said, her cheeks turning pink as she glanced down.