Laugh or Death (Lexi Graves Mysteries Book 6) (7 page)

"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 quiet
er 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 memories 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 r
un 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 perv
e." 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.

"Detective Graves," he grunted as he picked up.

"Hello, Detective Graves. This is PI Graves calling about Mrs. Graves' robbery."

"I'm gonna kill the bastard that robbed my wife," said Jord, sounding every bit like he meant it.

"I'm sure you'll be first in the queue."

"You bet I am. If he hurt her
, they wouldn't ever find his body either."

"Let's be glad he didn't hurt her. How was she after I left?"

"Pissed, more than anything. Forensics came by and took fingerprints and photos, but there wasn't much to see. Thanks for clearing the glass. We got the window pane replaced and Lily insisted on opening as normal."

"I'm glad."

"I'm not. What if it's open season on the bar now that the local creeps know the takings are good?"

"How many are stupid enough to steal from the Graves?"

"True. What can I do for you, sis?"

"Just wanted to check into the robbery. See what the situation is."

"So far, nothing. I got security footage from across the street to check into, but it doesn't look like it covers the doors to Lily's bar, and I have her own security tape. I interviewed the employee, Kyle Emerson, but he didn't see much. Got attacked from behind."

"He didn't see the thief at all?"

"Not much. Pretty average description. White male, six-foot, average build."

"That's thirty percent of Montgomery."

"Yeah. I'm looking for local guys with priors. But it's a needle in a haystack."

"Is Lily at the bar now?"

"Yeah. I'm meeting her at the end of her shift."

"Okay, well, say hi from me and tell her I'm looking into it too."

"Don't bother, Lexi. I've got the whole of Montgomery crawling over this one."

"It's no trouble
, really. Lily asked me."

"Yeah, I'm sure she did
, but leave this one to the pros, 'kay? There's nothing you can find that we can't."

Somehow
, I doubted that, but given the tense note in Jord's voice, I knew he was in no mood for arguing. Plus, since Lily was my best friend, and asked me to help, he could just lump it. I powered that thought to him telepathically before we said our goodbyes.

As I got out of the car, I waved to my neighbor
, Aidan, who was sitting on his porch step, a beer in hand, watching his hearing dog, Barney, sprawled on the grass. I'd never seen a dog that could spread-eagle so successfully. I waved hi before heading indoors.

Solomon was picking me up at eight
, which left me barely enough time to shower and blow out my hair, and even less time to pick a sexy outfit. I had just slipped into a little, black dress and satin heels when I heard the door open and close. For a moment, there was silence, and my heart did that little jump it always did when I heard a strange noise in the house. That was a leftover side effect from a nighttime break-in when someone tried to kill me on my last case. I still got a little jumpy at unexpected moments. Then Solomon's voice filled the fear void. "Lexi, are you ready to go?"

"Yep," I said, appearing at the top of the staircase, my heartbeat slowing to a normal rate
before striking a pose.

Solomon gave a long, low
, wolf whistle. "You look sensational," he breathed, his eyes running the length of me. "If I hadn't made reservations..."

I descended, stepping into his arms as my heels hit the floor. He smelled great,
and felt great, as his warm arms enveloped me. He rested his head on top of mine, then pulled back a little, stooping his head to kiss me fully on the lips. "I am a lucky, lucky man," he said between kisses, "and I'll never stop telling you that."

"And I'm a lucky woman," I told him, gazing up at his deep
, brown eyes. I could lose myself in them, if staring straight into someone's eyes for too long wouldn't make me look completely crazy; but really, who cared when it was Solomon?

"C'mon. We don't want to be late and I love having a beautiful woman on my arm."

"Shame it's just Montgomery, huh?"

"It'll be somewhere exotic when this case is over. How is your lead panning out?"

"I'll know in the morning," I told him, taking his arm as we left my bungalow and headed to Solomon's vehicle. "Yours?"

"No dice with Leo. Not even a parking ticket to his name."

"Just a regular citizen, hmm? Solomon, did anyone ever tell you that you are too suspicious?"

Solomon smiled. "Don't think anyone's ever mentioned it," he said, checking his mirrors before he pulled out. On the way, I filled him in on the status of Lily's case,
saying that my brother told me not to pursue my own investigation. "It's your call," Solomon said when I asked him what he thought I should do. "What do you want to do?"

"Keep at it," I said.

"Then keep at it," Solomon said, glancing at his mirrors again.

"That's the tenth time you checked the mirror. Are you having a bad hair day?"

Solomon smoothed a hand over his shaved head and laughed. "More like, I thought we were being followed kind of day. Don't turn around!"

"I wasn't going to, but... really?" I sneaked a pe
ek at my side mirror. Traffic was dense this evening, combined with the dimming light, making it hard to see if anyone was following.

"Dark compact, three cars back... hang on," Solomon said, pulling out of the way as three fire tr
ucks, sirens blaring, raced past, only a hair's breadth from our car. "Must be a big fire," he muttered as the traffic began to flow again and we took the right.

"I don't see any compact."

Solomon glanced into the mirror. "It's gone," he said. "Maybe it was nothing."

"Nuh-uh, you don't get to say that to me. You tell me to trust my instincts
," I said wondering what it was that had been playing on my mind all day. Something Leo had said... something I couldn't quite recall... something my instincts told me was important.

Solomon smiled. "In that case, we were being followed. I wish I knew why."