* * *
Charming Guy made his way up to and around the church, but he was too slow—he heard the creaking and thumping of someone coming down off a ladder around a corner, but once he turned it no one was there. He swore, but followed the trail of his suspect around the building until he came to a side door. He tried it—it was locked. Humming slightly below his breath, he pulled his trusty universal lockpick out of his jacket pocket and within a few moments had opened the door and stepped inside.
The hallway he entered into was the far end of the same hall he and Diamond had entered into to get to the egg decorating. He paused, listening. Nothing. He had been too slow, or his quarry was hiding.
Wait—what was that?
Faint sounds coming from a room on the left, across from the egg decorating room.
Charming Guy pocketed his lockpick again and, being amazingly stealthy for someone not wearing soft-soled shoes, snuck up on the door to the room on the left. He listened carefully for a few moments.
It was a kitchen, judging from the clattering and sounds of drawers being opened and shut. On a hunch, he snuck back down the hall again, toward the door he had come into, and waited.
A teenage boy wearing a red crewneck shirt and penny loafers left the kitchen, carrying a half-full bowl of reddish punch.
Charming Guy waited until he had entered the egg-decorating room and then made his way into the kitchen. It was small but tidy, except for a broom that was standing propped against the kitchen table. Charming Guy frowned, then opened a few doors that looked like broom cupboards. Nothing—nothing— aha!
There, in the third cupboard he had opened, was a large quad-copter drone, covered in Easter stickers just as Diane had described it. Whoever had flown the drone had done so from on top of the roof, the only direction Diane and any other possible observers would not see it arriving from. A bit precarious for a thousand dollars, but the youth that had carried the punch didn’t seem very old—perhaps he felt the risk was worth it?
Next to the drone was an empty plastic shopping bag, containing a receipt. Charming Guy looked at it. There were nine packets of Dr. Suddenly’s Extra Strength Cherry-Flavoured Laxatives listed on it.
Charming Guy texted Agent Diamond.
Found our suspect, he wrote. Teenage boy, red shirt, punch bowl. Punch contains laxatives.
He took a few photos of the drone and the laxative bill, and forwarded those to Diamond as well.
Fifty Shades of Easter Page 3