Chapter 7 – Ki

 

I pushed through the doors to the sub shop and spotted Alexa in a back booth. I nodded my head at her before walking up to the counter and placing my usual order. A full-sized chicken breast sandwich, with mozzarella and bacon, lightly toasted. I threw in an order of chips and grabbed a drink before paying. I weaved my way between the bistro tables, which were mostly filled with moms catching up with their friends or tourists.

“I got a little info on Lucas,” Alexa blurted as soon as I sat down in the booth.

“I saw Lucas!”

She froze mid-bite and put her sandwich down. “What do you mean you saw him?”

“Well, he found me.”

“How?” she asked, taking a bite of her sub sandwich.

I figured I could fill her in while I waited for someone to call out that my order was ready. I eyeballed Alexa’s sandwich, jealous that she was already enjoying hers. That’s what I get for letting Mr. Bale distract me with his wife drama. “I was sitting on a bench, waiting for that woman to walk out of the temp service. OMG!” I slammed my hand on the table. A group of kids a couple of tables away from us turned and stared before continuing their conversation. I waited a beat and then lowered my voice. “It was Prescot’s wife!”

She started choking on her sandwich, and I moved to go pat her back, but she waved me off. She took a long sip of her iced tea and wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Continue.”

“His wife!” I tried to contain myself. “His stupid, skinny, bitch of a wife is cheating on him.”

“Who’d want to cheat on a man that looked that good?”

“Right?” I knew she had seen his picture online. “He’s better in person, and she’s trying to get more money from him.”

“By cheating?” she asked, confused.

“No.”

They called my name, I grabbed my food, and sat back down. As I unwrapped my sub, I said, “She’s getting the temp service owner to send over pretty girls, as a way to tempt Prescot into sleeping with them. It’s stupid though. I don’t think he looks at people that way. He’s so wrapped up in his work.”

“Tell me everything.”

We ate, we exchanged information, and she suggested that I go to court and watch Prescot in action. She even called Josh to see if he could figure out exactly where he was and if it was something I could sit in on. I wasn’t sure if I was going to do that, but she insisted. She also told me that when she asked her detective friend about Lucas Hills that he didn’t confirm or deny he knew the name. She said the flirting didn’t work and we weren’t sure what that meant.

“Okay, so this is what we know.” I pulled out my small notebook from my bag. “He was born into a rich family. A very rich family who are well-known in New York, and stopped contacting his mom roughly six months ago. His cell is dead or turned off,” I paused and looked up at her. “We need to find someone who knows how to find cell phones. Like where their last pings came from.”

“That’s a great idea! Maybe we could hire someone part-time.”

“Well, let’s not get crazy, but yes, that’d help, or someone who does freelance work like we do.”

“You’re so smart.”

“I know.” I smirked and started writing again. “Okay, so Lucas knows we’re looking for him, but how? You were with the detective when he sat next to me, and the coffee shop was a dead end, so how did he know?”

“He’s probably following you, or us. It’s the only way he’d know.”

A chill went through me. I wasn’t used to being on the other side of this. I was used to following people, not the other way around.

I sat back in the booth. “Shit, he is.”

“Wonder if we could draw him back out?”

“What are you thinking?”

She grinned. “Holding up a sign with his name on it.”

I started laughing. “That would be hilarious, but I think we need to be a bit more discreet with this case.”

“We can’t tell his mom either, because then we’d have to return part of the money,” she reminded me.

“True. I mean, we didn’t find him.”

“He found us.”

“Something funky is going on for sure,” I said, tapping my pencil on the notebook.

“This new hypothetical employee of ours, we need them to be able to hack into things. Like the police database or the NSA.”

“We aren’t trying to hack the NSA.” I dropped my pencil and pulled a sucker out of my bag. “The police database, that’d help us a lot. We could take on larger cases.”

“I made a mental note to find someone with those skills.”

“I’m sure you did.” I let the purple sucker invade my taste buds, and let my thoughts wander but they wandered to Prescot immediately. The gentle touch of his hand on the middle of my back. His chuckle. That damn dimple. He wasn’t much of a talker, kind of an oddball in my opinion, but that was the best part. Given his size and handsomeness, I would have thought he was cocky and slept around. But he was married. Well, not for long. It was obvious why they were getting a divorce, but at one point, it was good. They were in love, or they wouldn’t have been married.

“So,” she said, placing our wrappers on the tray, “we should both go watch Mr. Bale in action. Josh just texted me where he was, and said he could get us in.”

I wanted to see that side of him. See if he was the same when he’s in court as he was the few times I’ve been around him.

I heard the table of patrons behind me talking about movies, and I remembered there was a new one coming out that I wanted to see. I pulled my phone out and looked it up online, and decided tomorrow morning I was going to treat myself. Once a month, I go to a movie, alone. It’s like going to the spa for some people or having a pedicure. I couldn’t eat popcorn because of my braces, but soon I would be able to. So I got my usual small Cherry Pepsi and brought a few suckers each time. I go early and made sure to sit in the top row, right in the middle. It was the best seat in the place.

“What about Lucas?” I asked her after she had dumped the tray.

“I’ll make a few calls, but really, we’re at a standstill.”

“What about the other cases?”

She pulled out her matching notebook and flipped through some pages. “We’re good. We can work on them later today or tomorrow.”

“I’m going to a movie in the morning.”

“That’s my Ki. Always doing shit alone.”

“Yes, and I love it. Besides, we go to a movie once a month together also.”

“True.” She closed her notebook. “Let’s go to court!”

Twenty minutes later, we slipped inside the courtroom and sat in the back row. The judge was an older man and was looking at the person who was testifying, but as soon as we sat down, I couldn’t see them. It was packed in here.

“Objection! Your Honor, the—”

“Oh, come on—”

“Your Honor!”

The judge interrupted them, he said a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand, and then it got quiet again.

“Who’s who?” Alexa whispered, trying to look around the people in front of us for a better view.

“I don’t know, but it didn’t sound like him.”

Prescot was sitting in the chair on the right side, and there were three other men at the table. One was his client, and the other two must be his associates.

I glanced at the jury. Most of them looked like they were in their thirties with a few in their fifties. They were all looking at someone different, their eyes bouncing around; some of them were taking notes. Those twelve people would decide this man’s fate.

“Your witness, Mr. Bale.”

Alexa shoulder checked me and smiled.

“Knock it off,” I hissed more to the butterflies that were fluttering in my stomach than to Alexa. I felt like my face was on fire and I was thankful at that moment that I always blended in.

“It’s fun.”

I saw him stand from his chair. “Did you kill Miss—”

“Objection!” the other attorney yelled as he jumped up.

“I’d like to know the answer to that question.”

“Your Honor!”

“Sit down, Counselor.”

He sat, and started whispering to the man sitting next to him.

“Did you kill Miss Lemon?” Prescot asked again, not moving from behind the table.

“No,” the man answered, who I still couldn’t see.

“Can you see anything?” I asked Alexa.

“No, those two,” she pointed at two tall men in the second row, “are blocking my view, but there’s nowhere else to sit.”

“Did you hire someone to kill Miss Lemon?”

“No.”

I could see the other lawyer getting upset and on the verge of objecting again.

“Were you with Miss Lemon on the night of the murder?”

“No.”

Prescot reached for something on his desk. “Your Honor, I’d like to enter into evidence, Exhibit 6A.” A few gasps could be heard within the courtroom, and the judge raised his gavel in warning.

The man finally jumped out of his chair. “We have no record of this new evidence, your Honor.”

Prescot handed something to him, then strode with confidence to the judge’s stand and handed something to him also.

The judge looked it over. “Now you do. We’ll take an hour recess so you can prepare.”

He banged his gavel a few times and then stood.

“This is fun,” Alexa said while I watched Prescot talk to the other men at the table.

“Let’s go before he sees me and thinks I’m stalking him.”

“But we just got here,” she whined.

People started standing to leave, and I wanted to get out of here before he saw me.

“We can come eavesdrop on court anytime we want.” I pulled her behind me, and we slipped out, hopefully without him seeing me.

“You’re no fun.”

Once we were safely outside and far enough away from the courthouse that my heart began to beat in a regular rhythm again, I stopped to pull out another sucker. “Hey, I was invited to happy hour by Molly, so she must think I’m fun.”

“Who’s Molly?”

“The receptionist at Prescot’s firm.”

“Oh, that’s right; I forgot you told me her name was Molly.”

“Well, she invited me, thinks I’m one of them because of my sick calendar skills.”

“You can get pretty OCD at times.”

“It keeps our business and finances in order.”

“True. And we don’t have to pay someone else to do it.”

“So, you wanna crash happy hour with me? Meet all the assistants?”

Alexa wrinkled her nose, and we started walking. “Gee, thanks, Ki. But, I think I’m gonna have to pass on that one.” The sarcasm in her tone rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t want her to feel left out, but I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to mingle with some lawyer assistants either.

“Seriously, Alexa? Why the snobby tone?”

Her cheeks pinkened a touch, which surprised me. Nothing embarrassed Alexa. I once saw her streak through our dorms during finals’ week in college. I once saw her convince a man that she didn’t speak English, just by speaking with an accent. I even saw her dress in Amish-style clothing when we first moved to New York, just for shits and giggles.

“I’m sorry, Ki. I didn’t mean it that way. I just think it is a good opportunity for you to do something without me.”

“I do tons of stuff without you, Lex.”

“Well, go then. Have fun. Mingle. Thanks for the invite, honestly. But, I’m kinda having my own little happy hour with a certain detective.” She tried so hard to hide her grin, and I smirked right back at her.

“Oh, well that explains a lot. Will this be for business or pleasure?” I almost didn’t want to know. She only dated men for a month or two, and as soon as they started to have feelings for her, she’d leave. She’s afraid of commitment, but most of all, letting someone down. She doesn’t think she’s good enough for a relationship.

“Both, Ki. It will totally be both.”

We giggled our way into the office before getting back down to business. Alexa ducked out after an hour or two to get ready for her ‘business date.’ An hour later, after I finished writing the last email on my list, she slinked over to me wearing an incredibly tight black mini dress. Her hair was piled on top of her head that screamed sex-kitten, but if I tried to pull off that look, it’d scream hobo. Her makeup was light; she was a natural beauty and hardly needed anything at all. She wore her ‘lucky’ heels and a few classic silver bangle bracelets and blew me a kiss as she strutted out of the office. I sent her off a text, reminding her to keep it business related, and she sent me back a winky-face emoji. I then sent Molly a quick text, letting her know something came up. I skipped happy hour and reorganized some of our files while listening to music. I made sure I had everything ready for the accountant to pay our quarterly taxes before I closed up for the night. I warmed up some leftover take-out and settled on the couch for a much-needed Netflix binge session. I got a few episodes in before my eyes started to close. I cleaned up, changed, and then crawled into bed at midnight. I pulled up my newest ebook on my Kindle app on my phone and resolved to finish at least a chapter before I went to sleep. When I dropped my phone on my face from falling asleep during reading, I tossed it aside and finally gave in to sleep.