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At eleven o’clock that night Paige and Sophie were ensconced in Sophie’s car, parked a couple of doors down from a rather large bungalow in Sandringham where Hannah, Sophie’s newly acquired half-sister, was house-sitting.
Sophie was trying to focus on the job at hand but was having difficulty because Roman also lived in Sandringham. He could even be on this street for all she knew. Her thoughts kept drifting to him, replaying their conversation at Cecilia’s party—reliving every single moment. She shook her head, annoyed at herself. She was dating Wade. In a few days they were going on a proper dinner date, just the two of them, and Sophie wanted to give their potential relationship a proper shot.
Next to her, Paige yawned, causing Sophie to stifle her own yawn. It had only been two hours, and as far as Sophie was concerned this stakeout was just as dull as the first one they’d been on. She was pretty sure Paige was as bored as she was, but she refused to admit it because doing this was the absolute epitome of being an investigator. When Paige was on a stakeout, just as when she wrote clues on the murder board or made notes in her little black notebook, Paige was living her best ‘investigator’ self.
“Shall I text Leo and tell him what we’re doing?” Paige said with a smirk.
“Awkward. The last time we were staking him out.”
“I know.” Paige rolled her eyes. “That’s why it’s funny.”
Sophie suspected Leo wouldn’t think it was funny. In the middle of his ill-advised pet-napping scheme, they’d caught him delivering a ransom note, and in a panic, he’d rammed his car into Sophie’s treasured Volkswagen Jetta. He’d now paid her back for the insurance excess, but Sophie knew Leo was still embarrassed by the whole thing.
“I still haven’t spoken to him, you know. Not properly. Have you?” Sophie asked.
“Nope. Why?”
“He’s been so cagey and distant. You don’t think he wants to stop working with us, do you? It’s not as if we give him regular hours or anything.”
Paige scoffed. “He loves S & S Investigations.”
“Yeah, but he has to pay rent.”
Paige shrugged. “He’s fine.”
Sophie sighed. Paige lived in a bubble of family wealth and a partner with a steady income—not to mention his own house—and could be ignorant about the practicalities of life.
Paige glanced out into the darkness. “Let’s go over the locked room case while we wait. Peyton’s disappeared.”
“His cleaner said he’d just gone away for a few days.”
“Same dif. He’s AWOL and it looks super guilty.”
“But if doesn’t know we’re investigators then why would he run?”
“Sally’s his editor, remember? Maybe she told him. Maybe she called him and warned him that we would ask about his finances.”
Sophie nodded slowly. “Because if she is helping him out of something and she’s using company funds inappropriately, or something, she wouldn’t want that to get out either. Yeah, he could be dodging us.”
“Sally must know where he is and when he’s coming back.”
“But rather than being the manuscript thief, maybe he’s just covering up whatever his financial thing is.”
“Possible.”
“If Peyton’s short of money, how does he even have a cleaner?” Sophie mused.
“I can’t imagine him doing any cleaning, at all.”
“True. You know what, though, the thing that doesn’t make sense to me is that in publishing the book under that pen name he doesn’t get any personal accolades. Peyton strikes me as someone who wants accolades.” Sophie tilted her head. “But maybe he’s fed up with being the award-winning but poor artist. Maybe it is as simple as him needing financial reward. It’s a powerful motivator.”
“And it kind of applies to everyone, right? Whoever did it could be doing it for the money.”
“And to set up a successful writing career.”
“I left messages for Geoff and Tammy, by the way, but they haven’t replied yet.”
“Maybe Leo can tell us something about the Amazon profile of the writer who published the book. Amazon will have tight security but it’s worth asking,” Sophie suggested. “If he doesn’t get in contact soon, we might need to find out what’s going on with him.”
Paige nodded. “And I called Cecilia to ask when Leo could get another look at her hard drive and computer and when we could inspect her room and she hasn’t replied either. I mean, she said she’d get back to me, but she hasn’t.”
Sophie felt a twinge of guilt as she thought about all the phone calls Paige had made for this case compared with the zero she herself had taken responsibility for. But one of the reasons she and Paige made such a good team was because they had different strengths.
“If Leo can confirm that the deletion did occur on December 10th, I think it’s safe to say that one of the visitors to her house could have slipped upstairs during the afternoon,” Sophie said. “But what about the locked door?”
“Cecilia can’t keep the key with her at every single moment of every single day. It’s got to be possible for someone to have made a copy. And Martin is at the top of that list, right?”
Sophie added in agreement. “The way he was hovering outside the door when we were there? That was weird.”
“Let’s go round to Cecilia’s house tomorrow and ask him. We can ask to see the room again.”
“But Cecilia hasn’t—”
“If she wants us to solve this, we need to visit the house again.” Paige suddenly sat up. “Hey, what’s that?” She pointed across the street, then turned wide eyes to Sophie. “I think I saw someone creep down the side of the house.”
***
LEO SAT IN FRONT OF his laptop at the small table in Jane’s motel room. “We now know for sure you were on Dominion Road last week. You seemed upset, you may have had a male companion, and uh,” Leo cleared his throat, “he may not have been welcome?”
Jane nodded.
“And according to the lady in the organics shop, the man was probably in his thirties, with dark blond or light brown hair, and average height. Average-looking all round. Doesn’t make it easy to identify him, does it.”
Jane shook her head and gave Leo a weak smile. “If only he had a big scar down the side of his face or something.”
“Maybe an eyepatch?” Leo added.
“And a parrot on his shoulder.” Her smile widened. “That would really help, right?”
“Yeah, cos there’s not much else to go on.”
Leo had already explored the internet as much as he could but hadn’t made any progress in figuring out who she was. There were no news reports of missing people. He’d even searched for car crashes and any kind of accident, but there was nothing.
Jane suddenly turned to Leo. “What if it’s really bad?” Her voice shook. “What if the thing I can’t remember is so bad that my brain has shut it out. What if it’s better I don’t know?”
***
SOPHIE EASED HER DOOR shut and looked over the top of the car at Paige. “But what are we going to do?” she whispered.
“We’re going to go see who it is. Obviously.”
“But what if we catch him and he, uh, gets aggressive?”
Paige smiled and pulled a long, thin, cylindrical baton out of her bag. She whipped it down and it extended by about a foot.
Sophie’s eyes went wide. “What the—”
“The female detective on Hard Sun has one.” Paige tilted it left and right. “Awesome, right?”
“Umm. Do you know how to use it?”
“You hit people with it. What’s to know?” Paige jogged across the road.
“Paige,” Sophie hissed taking off after her.
“It’s for self-defence,” Paige hissed back over her shoulder.
They crept toward the front of the house, keeping low. “Let’s go down the other side,” Paige whispered.
Crouching even lower, they both made their way down the side of the house to the back. They huddled at the edge of the house and peeked around the corner.
There, standing on the back deck and looking into the window, looking almost as if he owned the place, was a tall figure with dark hair. When he turned, Sophie clapped one hand over her mouth. “Oh my god. It’s Josh Spencer.”
