Sharon is writing everything down. I'm watching her work, and I'm struck by how focused she is. How determined. How absolutely gorgeous she looks when she's concentrating on something that matters to her.
"What kind of books?" Sharon asks, and I can see the pieces starting to come together in her head.
"Self-help books mostly," Eleanor says. "Books about starting a business. Books about financial planning. A few books about real estate development. Some books about how to manipulate people."
My eyebrows shoot up. "She bought a book about manipulating people?"
"Multiple books actually," Eleanor says, flipping through her ledger. "She seemed very interested in psychological tactics and how to use them to get what she wanted. I remember thinking it was a bit ominous, to be honest. Most people who buy books like that don't want to admit they're reading them."
We leave the bookstore with approximately two hundred dollars added to Penelope's tab and a growing sense that whatever she and Ben are planning, it's much more calculated than we initially thought.
The liquor store is next. A place called The Bottle Shop, run by a man named Gerald who looks like he's seen every type of person and their personal demons walk through his doors. He doesn't seem surprised when we ask about Penelope's tab.
"About two hundred and thirty dollars," he says, pulling out a credit card slip and showing us the amount. "Mostly expensive wine and vodka. The good stuff, not the cheap stuff. She kept saying she was celebrating a major life event coming up. That she'd be able to pay once the wedding happened."
"How much total are we talking about?" I ask, already doing the mental math. Three hundred and fifty at The Sway. Two hundred at the bookstore. Two hundred and thirty at the liquor store. We're already at over seven hundred dollars.
"With the interest and late fees I've been adding, about two hundred and forty-five," Gerald says. "But I'm not going to press charges or anything. I just want to get paid."
By the time we get to the lingerie store, which is called Silk and Sin and is absolutely awkward to walk into together, Sharon is practically vibrating with curiosity. The store owner, a woman named Vanessa with purple hair and approximately fifteen piercings, doesn't even wait for us to ask.
"Oh, you're here about Penelope's tab," Vanessa says, looking up from a stocktaking notebook. "Yeah, she owes me about four hundred and seventy dollars. Bought a lot of expensive lingerie. High-end stuff. Imported things. Really nice pieces, actually. She has good taste, I'll give her that."
"Any idea what she was using the lingerie for?" I ask, even though I have a pretty good idea.
"Honeymoon, probably," Vanessa says, shrugging. "She kept talking about how her husband-to-be needed to see her in certain things. How she needed to look perfect for him. Standard bride stuff, really. The problem is that she hasn't paid a single bill, and when I asked her about it, she said she'd settle everything after the wedding. After she came into money."
By the time we leave Silk and Sin, Sharon has calculated that Penelope's total debt is somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars, and that's just what we've found so far.
"She must be doing something with all this stuff," Sharon says as we're walking back toward the office. "The books, the alcohol, the lingerie. Nobody just buys that much stuff without a plan."
"Well, the lingerie is pretty self-explanatory," I say, squeezing her hand gently. "The alcohol could be for the wedding or for drinking through the stress of the wedding or for drowning her sorrows after the wedding falls apart. But the books about manipulation and business and psychology? Those aren't for personal use. Those are research."
Sharon stops walking, and I can see the exact moment the puzzle pieces click together in her head. Her eyes go wide, and her scent shifts to something that smells like understanding mixed with alarm.
"She's researching how to manipulate Ben," Sharon says slowly. "And how to start a business. And how to do real estate development. She's not just trying to marry him for money. She's planning something bigger. Something calculated."
"Which means we need to go back to the office and see what else we can figure out," I say, already pulling out my phone to call Cassian and Pine. "Because if Penelope is planning something this elaborate, we need to know what it is before she actually goes through with it."
Sharon is holding my hand the entire time as we head to her office, and every once in a while, she looks up at me determined, even though she knows doing this could derail her entire chance at taking over Bourbon Bliss Weddings.
"Penelope is not going to be happy if she finds out we've been investigating her spending habits,” I say as I can see Sharon beaming from all the news as she unlocks the office door.
"Let her be unhappy," Sharon says, and there's something fierce in her voice that makes my alpha brain sit up and pay attention. "She's using psychological tactics that she specifically researched. She deserves to be investigated."
We sit down at Sharon's desk, and she pulls up her browser. I'm watching her work, watching her fingers fly across the keyboard as she navigates to Ben's social media profiles. She clicks through his photos, his posts, his tagged locations, and suddenly she's saying something that makes everything click into place.
"Look at this," she says, pointing at the screen. "Ben's posts have shifted. He went from posting about wedding planning to posting about real estate investment opportunities. He's talking about developing property in Pine Hollow. He's talking about building resorts and vacation rentals and commercial spaces."
"And Penelope bought books about real estate development and how to start a business," I say, the pieces falling into place. "They're planning to do something to this town. They're planning to buy property and develop it, and they need Ben's family money to do it."
"Which means the marriage is just a steppingstone," Sharon says quietly. "It's not actually about love or commitment. It's about access to money and resources and Ben's connections."
"We need to tell Cassian and Pine," I say, turning back to face Sharon as I stand by the window. "We need to tell them everything we've found out."
"Jessica has the day off," Sharon says, gesturing around the empty office. "She's been sleeping in and doing nothing because the heating situation exhausted her. But she's going to want to know about this too."
"I'm really into you," I say, and it comes out before I've really thought about it. "And you're into this investigation, which means I'm into this investigation because that's what pack does. We support each other. We go on weird detective missions together. We figure things out."
