Laugh or Death (Lexi Graves Mysteries Book 6)

by Camilla Chafer

  "Maddox!"

  Chapter Six

  "Earth to Lexi." Solomon's voice could have been coming from miles away as I blinked and looked up.

  "Huh? What did I miss?"

  "Nothing. I stopped talking when I realized you were on a different planet. Are you okay?"

  "Who? Me? Peachy." I joined my hands and reached forwards, stretching as I tried to remember exactly what we just talked about. Oh, yes. The case. "So where are we on Leo Chandler?"

  "Nothing, so far. I've run background checks and they're all clear. I've followed him and he hasn’t done anything exciting while he's been in town. Visited the tourist hotspots, spent a lot of time wandering the streets and frequenting coffee shops. Saw him run into you."

  "You saw that? Where were you?"

  Solomon smiled. "I'll never tell. Anyway, his evenings aren't spent carousing."

  "What does he do in the evenings?"

  "Nothing, from what I've seen. Holes up in the hotel bar, reads, or stays in his room."

  "So what you're saying is..." I paused for dramatic effect, "I'm winning?"

  "No, I'm saying, this guy is weird and I'm going to find out what he's hiding."

  "It was weird bumping into him today outside Nancy's apartment," I told Solomon, skipping over the bit about my failed attempts to get the security camera tapes.

  "That's a big coincidence."

  "That's what I thought at first, but he said he was just wandering around. I guess if he doesn't know anyone else in town, that sounds like something he would do. Especially," I added, "based on your surveillance."

  "So we have nothing on Leo yet. Where are you with Nancy?"

  "I had an idea that maybe she skipped out of her apartment and took public transport somewhere. I have a list of all the immediate bus routes and thought Lucas could hack them. If she took a bus, we could follow her to wherever she went. Maybe that would help us locate her now."

  "Sounds good. Did you tell Leo that?"

  I shook my head. "No, just that Nancy was seen in the area and I was following up that lead."

  "I think it's time we checked in with our client. Do you want to make the call?"

  "Sure, but it depends on what you want me to tell him."

  "It's not so much what you tell him, but what you can get out of him."

  "What do you want to know?"

  Solomon rested back in his chair and steepled his fingers under his chin, pondering my question. "First off, give him an update on the basics of the case."

  "Easy," I sighed. "We have nothing."

  "We don't have nothing. We have new leads to follow, but he doesn't need to know what they are. After that, I want you to draw him out. Find out more about his relationship with Nancy, if there was anything she particularly liked to do, something she might have been drawn to here that might help your search. Stuff they might have done together."

  "You think she was drawn to something that seemed familiar?"

  "If she can remember her name, which it appears she does, then yes, working with the amnesia theory, I think she might remember other things. But..."

  "But what?"

  "If your theory is right that she had a go bag, she might remember everything."

  "Yeah..." I paused, wondering where Solomon was headed with his thoughts. Then it clicked. "Oh! You want me to find out if their relationship went bad."

  Solomon nodded. "It would be useful to know what their relationship was like in the run-up to her disappearance..."

  "In case Leo is hiding something," I finished. "But he seemed so sad!"

  "Maybe they split up and he's not over it," Solomon said. "Maybe he's a really annoying ex who won't let go."

  "Kind of an elaborate ruse for a sad ex, and an expensive one."

  "I know. It still doesn't sit right." Solomon leaned towards the desk and pushed his desk phone towards me. "Make the call."

  I had to search in the file for Leo's cell phone number, but when I found it, I tapped it into the keypad and waited while it rang. When it connected, Solomon hit the speaker button, filling the small office with the ringing sound.

  "Hello?"

  "Leo, hi, it's Lexi Graves from the Solomon Agency."

  "Hi, I didn't expect to hear from you so soon. Do you have news?" he asked eagerly. I was glad he couldn't see the face I pulled.

  "I just called with an update, but it's not great, so please don't get your hopes up."

  "The sighting this morning? You didn't find her?" his voice dropped, the previous tone of optimism rapidly dissipating.

  "No, not yet, but I have new leads to follow and I'll be starting on them today."

  "What kind of leads?"

  I paused, waiting for Solomon. He nodded, so I said, "I'm going to check further into whether Nancy was caught on camera near where she was sighted. It might give us some ideas as to where she was coming from or going to."

  "That's great news! Well done, Lexi. I'm really impressed that you can do all this stuff. I wouldn't know where to start."

  "Oh well, you know... it's what I'm trained to do."

  "How long did you train? Did you go to some kind of academy?" Leo inquired anxiously.

  "No, it was on-the-job training."

  "You boss must have seen something really special in you. I know I do. I really had a stroke of luck when you took the case."

  "That's kind of you to say, but about the case..."

  "Have you been a PI long? Is it dangerous?"

  "A while, and yes, it is sometimes," I admitted, trying not to think about the bullets, knives and beatings I hadn't exactly successfully dodged since my employment. Come to think of it, I wasn’t all that successful before Solomon gave me the job either.

  "Wow. Have you ever had to fight someone off? Bad guys?"

  "Once or twice," I said, frowning as Solomon made a get on with it gesture with his hand. Since I gave Leo a snippet of information about the case, it was time to draw him out more, and make him talk about himself.

  "Wow! You're a real life action girl. I'm impressed. It's good to know you're on my team."

  "Speaking of the team, how are you finding Montgomery?"

  "Oh, it's a nice town."

  "We don't have many tourist attractions or things to do, but I hope you found something to keep you occupied?" I asked, waiting for him to tell me what he'd done since his arrival.

  "Just been walking around, probably been to all the coffee shops," Leo laughed. "It's not a lot of fun when you're on your own. I need company."

  "What would you have done if you were here with Nancy?"

  "I guess I am here with Nancy," he mused, "since she's here somewhere and so am I."

  "But if you were together..."

  "She liked to go to the park," he said. "She loved walking and nature."

  "Is there anywhere else she would have gone?"

  "A bookshop, maybe. One of those secondhand ones... Nancy called it recycling... and she liked art. Sometimes she sketched in the park. She was really good at drawing flowers. I have some of her drawings, somewhere. No, I think they're at home, or I'd show them to you."

  "It must be really hard losing someone that you shared so many happy times with..." I trailed off, again leaving Leo to fill in the blanks.

  "It's the worst. When she first went missing, I'd never been so worried in my life. Now I'm used to it, I guess, but it's not something you ever want to get used to."

  "I guess you're the kind of couple who never argued?"

  "Oh no, hardly ever. We were really happy."

  "What were you doing on the day Nancy disappeared?"

  "Uh... well... let's see... we had breakfast and...

  "What?" Solomon mouthed and I frowned and shrugged. He grabbed a sheet of notepaper and wrote What did they eat?

  "What did you have to eat?" I asked.

  "Uh... eggs, I think. I made scrambled eggs and bacon. Is that important?"

  "Just trying to get a snapshot of your lives," I told him. "Then
what did you do?

  "I cleaned up the kitchen while Nancy read the newspaper, and we... we talked a while; then we decided to take a walk since it was a Saturday and Nancy wanted to do some sketches. We were walking around when she tripped..."

  "What did she trip on?" I asked, repeating Solomon's mouthed words.

  "Uh... a tree root, or a branch, or something. There was a fallen tree. I heard her yelp in pain and I reached out for her, but she crashed down and her head hit the tree and her eyes rolled back into her head. It was scary stuff, Lexi. I panicked. I didn't know what to do! She wasn't coming around so I left to get my car to drive her to hospital."

  "Why didn't you call nine-one-one?" I asked.

  "Cell reception was patchy out there, and it would have been quicker to drive than wait for an ambulance, so I knew I had to get her to hospital. So, I went to get my car from the house, and I was gone barely ten minutes, but when I got back to the tree, she was gone. I thought I must have not remembered where we were, so I walked around for a while, calling her name. Then I saw blood on a leaf and I retraced my steps and I knew she was gone. I searched everywhere, but I couldn't find her." He stopped, his breathing heavy over the phone line like he was trying to regain his composure. "Does that help any?"

  "Yes," I assured him, "Yes, you've been very helpful." I said my goodbyes, promising him again that I'd call when there was any news before hitting end. "I don't know how any of that helps. I didn't get any useful information," I sighed.

  "Actually, you did. He told you more than you realize."

  "You know something is niggling. Something he said, but I don't know what." I frowned, thinking hard, but nothing came to me. "What did you get?"

  "I got too much information. Would you remember all that happened if I disappeared?"

  "No, I'd be too pissed at you for disappearing."

  Solomon laughed. "Would you look for me?"

  "I'd have the whole MPD looking for you." Saying that reminded me of another person I'd seen only a couple hours before. "And the FBI," I said, pausing.

  "What is it?" asked Solomon, sensing there was more.

  "I saw Maddox today."

  "Maddox?" Solomon arched his brows, waiting patiently, but it didn't escape my notice that his voice dropped a couple of octaves. Solomon and Maddox were never close friends, but they were once colleagues and thus, respected each other. Maddox was my boyfriend, but it didn’t end well after I saw him kissing another woman during an undercover op. For a long time, I stayed really angry with him. Recently, however, I came to the conclusion that what I saw could have been misinterpreted. It was too late for us now though, and too much happened that resulted in mutual distrust, so we split. We made our peace right before Maddox left MPD to join the FBI. I now considered him a close friend even though we hadn't been in touch for a while. While Solomon didn't say much about any of that, I was sure he wasn't exactly thrilled about our friendship. However, he was secure enough not to let it interfere with our relationship. "Adam Maddox?" he repeated. "Where?"

  "The same. He dropped by Lily's bar when he saw what happened. He's in town, working another case," I told him, recalling our brief meeting. Maddox told me he pulled over on his way downtown when he saw the squad cars outside Lily's. He decided to check up on her. It was a sweet gesture and I enjoyed our chat. Plus, he somehow seemed to have gotten even hotter since he left. I didn't need to tell Solomon that though. "He said to say, hey."

  "Humph. Damn shame about Lily's bar. Hope the cops catch the jerk. Check in with Lucas about those tapes, and then we'll go to dinner from here. Seven, okay?" he asked, abruptly changing the topic.

  "Actually, I promised to take a look at Lily's security tapes from when the bar closed up until the robbery."

  "When will you finish?"

  "Easily by seven, but then I need to go home and change."

  "What's wrong with what you're wearing?" Solomon asked, lifting his head to get a better view. I was wearing skinny jeans, red flats and a white blouse; and while they were okay for daywear, I didn't feel nearly smart enough for an evening date.

  "I need heels. I have standards," I told him.

  "We could get takeout and eat naked," said Solomon. "I have standards too."

  "I'll be dessert, but I'll still be in heels."

  "My standard is starting to rise."

  "Tell your standard to stand down. I'm very busy. I have to catch up with Lucas, before I bore myself rigid with security footage..."

  "There's filing, if you'd prefer that?"

  "No, thank you," I replied, promptly with a small shudder, as I stood. Filing and I were incompatible, and I held my resolve to avoid it at all possibilities ever since taking the job Solomon surprised me by offering. "I told Lily I'd find her thief."

  "That's your pro bono case for this month," said Solomon, agreeably. "I'll pick you up at eight and we'll go to that new French place. I already made reservations."

  "Yay!" I clapped my hands and beamed. I dropped one big hint about Royal's, the new French restaurant, after my sister and Delgado ate there. It was great to know that Solomon was paying attention. How he managed to get reservations was beyond me though. I heard they were booked solid since opening night. "Oui! Oui! Oui!" I blew Solomon a kiss as I departed. Pausing by my desk to drop my purse and files in the lockable drawer, I headed upstairs in search of Lucas.

  I found Lucas hiding behind a broad array of monitors. Several of them were running some kind of code that scrolled down the screens faster than I could attempt to read. Not that any of the fragments I caught made any sense, but Lucas appeared quite rapt.

  "Whatcha doing?" I asked, grabbing a chair and pulling it over, the wheels skimming across the floor quietly. Everything seemed quieter on this floor, but I preferred the joking atmosphere of the PI floor below. Here, everything was taken very seriously, judging by the expressions on my colleagues' faces. Solomon introduced me to them all, but I'd yet to work closely with any of them. If the truth be known, which I didn't really want to admit, I had no idea what went on up here. But I needed Lucas's help.

  "Errr... nothing," said Lucas, shifting a quick look at me before swearing at the screen on his left and stabbing a few keys. If anything changed, it was beyond me.

  "Great! Can you hack Montgomery's bus line network?"

  "Does a bear poop in the woods?"

  "Probably, but I've never seen it, so I really couldn't confirm..."

  "Yes," Lucas interrupted, "no problem. Any particular bus?"

  I reeled off the four buses that worked the street adjacent to Nancy's apartment and Lucas made a note of them. With a few stabs of the keyboard, the large screen in the center went blank, and then the Montgomery Bus logo appeared on screen. "Won't take long," Lucas told me, without looking over. "I've done this before."

  "Bet you say that to all the girls."

  Lucas paused, and this time, he did look over. "Ha-ha," he said, "still boinking the boss?"

  "Yes, thank you for asking," I replied primly.

  "Yeah, I know. I saw you canoodling in the stairwell." Lucas huffed a laugh and pointed to the furthest screen on my left. It was split into quarters. One showed the parking garage; another the front door to our building. The remaining quarters showed the stairwell leading to our offices, and the final one, the entry lobby that was just outside our floor entrance. I was pretty sure Solomon knew about the position of the cameras, so if getting caught didn't worry him, it didn't worry me.

  "Aww. Can I get a print of that?"

  "Sure," said Lucas. He reached into his drawer and passed it to me. "I was going to save it for blackmail, but I figured everyone already knows, so what's the point?"

  "Exactly. I might use this as my Christmas card." I tucked the print into my notepad and smiled. Okay, so it was a little weird that Lucas not only spotted Solomon and me in a clinch, but he also made a print. At least, I had it for posterity. I couldn't remember ever smooching a colleague at work, although I did have pleasant mem
ories of a few moments when I was stuck in a closet with Maddox. However, those pleasant memories didn’t include the dead body, or the goons the other side of the door, which was all in the past now.

  "We're in," said Lucas. "I need to know the time frame we're looking at."

  "Hmmm." There was no way to narrow it down further than the moment I walked into Pretty Paws and the next day, so I gave Lucas those times.

  "Even if we watch these in fast forward, there are four bus routes, with every bus on that route between those times. This will take hours, but..." Lucas rested backwards in his chair, his thumb and forefinger wrapped thoughtfully around his chin. "I have a new facial recognition program. If I run the program against the camera footage, it could speed it up."

  "How fast?"

  "Hours as opposed to many hours."

  "Good enough. I'll get you a photo from downstairs."

  "Is it Nancy Grant?"

  "Yes. How'd you know?"

  "I'm hacking your laptop. I'll have the digital photo from your file in just a... oh, got it!"

  "Lucas, that is such a violation of my privacy!"

  "I saved you walking downstairs in those heels!"

  I looked at my flats. ""I'm not wearing heels!"

  Lucas looked down. "I figured you were. Never mind. Okay, I've got the program running. Check in with me later."

  "Can you download the bus footage too?"

  "Doing it now."

  "Thanks, Lucas. I appreciate it and the photo, you perve." I patted him on the head with my notepad as I stood. "Call me if you find something?"

  "Heading out on a job?"

  "Hot date," I said. "I can't tell you with whom. It's a secret."

  Lucas smirked and shook his head.

  I had to admit I felt pretty proud of myself as I took the stairs down. My dead end might have found a new direction, and with luck, Lucas could provide that direction by the morning. I clung to that and checked my watch – doing a double take as I realized the time – and feeling unsure what to do if the bus lead ended up dead.

  Sliding into my desk chair, I opened my laptop and called up a blank document. "Stop snooping," I wrote in seventy-two-point type. I labeled it "Lucas" and saved it, dragging the icon until it was dead center on the screen before I powered down. I locked my laptop away in my desk, grabbed my purse and hightailed it to my car, thinking about Lily's bar on the way home. I should have asked Lucas if his program could identify people in police databases, as that might have helped me identify Lily's thief. I resolved to do just that the next day. For now, her disk was tucked safely in my purse. Of course, I knew it was a long shot that I'd discover anything. The police probably had a better handle on the robbery than I did. As I pulled onto my driveway and switched off the engine, I called Jord.