And, in my gut, I thoughtthe two things were connected. Maybe that was silly—after all, they didn’thaveto be, sincethere was no evidence, yet, to say they were.
But it was too much of acoincidence to ignore, wasn’t it?
Which led me to a cafe withduck egg blue and gold branding and a flying bird logo. The Branch.
The Branch.
What kind of unforgivablewanker would come to a place like this for coffee? Even Miles would’ve wrinkled hisnose.
All the same, this was wherethe IP address Jimmy’s contact had traced the original photo upload to pointed. Theemail he’d sent me had even explainedhowit was done, sothat with a little practice I could learn to do it myself.
I felt so stupid for notalready knowing. Surely this was one of the fundamental parts of detective workthese days?
I’d gotten into this becauseI was good atrecon. Tailing, looking for suspicious behavior, watchinga place for hours on end without complaining about it.
But there was so much moreto it than that, and for the first six months I’d felt like I was drowning.
Now I felt like I wastreading water, but one good wave would be enough to push me back under. Thiscase threatened to be that wave.
I was out of my depth.
As distracted by my ownthoughts as I was, I almost ran into a broad chest on my way through the door.
“Fox?” the chest asked, in afamiliar New Jersey accent.
I looked up to see Loganstanding in front of me, holding an eggshell-blue paper cup with a gilded birdon it.
“Logan?” I paused to absorbthe information that Logan had voluntarily been in a place like this.
Also that he was in LA.
Although that part was lessof a shock—after all, celebrities had become a kind of specialty for him. AndLos Angeles was crawling with them.
“You might’ve texted to letme know you were in town,” I said, still recovering from almost running intohim.
“Figured you’d be busy.”Logan shrugged. “How’s the case going?”
I sighed. If I couldn’t tell Logan,whocouldI tell?
“You’re blocking the doorwayof my only lead and I had to call in a favor to get it.”
“Oh,” Logan said, moving outof the way so I could duck into the cafe beyond.
On the inside, it lookedexactly like I’dimagined it from the outside. Plush, squat armchairs with mismatched upholsteryarranged around coffee tables that looked like they’d been collected from theside of the road filled the space. Overfilled the space, in my opinion.
I supposed the effect wasmeant to becozy, but it’d rather overshot the mark and landed onninety-year-oldhoarder.
A glance at the newspaperrack—a novelty in this day and age—suggested it hadn’t been cleared out sinceJuly last year.
It was May.
“What the hell were you doingin here?” I asked under my breath, trying to picture Logan in one of thearmchairs.
“Coffee’s good.” Loganshrugged. “Wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
Logan was the coffee snobamong us. He described various blends as having notes of almonds and chocolatelike he was talking about expensive wine. He had opinions about the relativemerits of various non-dairy milks, and which ones tasted best with what kind ofcoffee.
I didnotunderstand,nor did I want to.
