Clio points toward the ceiling in betrayal. “I live in a hostile environment.”
“You created it,” Aura calls back.
By then, containers are hitting the counter, lids are coming off, and the whole apartment starts smelling so good I nearly lose the ability to form coherent thoughts. Pulled pork, mac salad, dumplings, and fried rice. The honey garlic chicken Clio bought was because she has no self-control in food courts, which I can’t even criticize considering I almost opened the bag in the parking lot.
We all start moving at once, food passed around, everyone reaching over everyone else, filling our plates.
I load up mine and end up on the couch beside Priya, and it happens so easily I barely notice it at first, that quiet slipping-into-place feeling. No big moment, just space made for me like it was always there, which is nice.
“So,” I say, because the corkboard in the corner with the words, The Mai Tail Mystery Club, is grabbing my attention. “Clio said there’s a case you’re all working on.”
Priya swallows a bite of rice. “There’s always at least one.”
“Two, currently,” Clio adds, already perking up. “But one is clearly superior.”
“That’s not how investigations work,” Malia adds.
Clio laughs and sets her plate down, then heads for the corkboard with the unmistakable air of a woman who has been waiting all day for an audience even though she had one on the bus tour. She grabs a marker off the shelf and uncaps it like she’s about to deliver a keynote. “This,” she says, tapping the middle of the board, “is Rebecca Hana. Missing for a year. Official theory says she left voluntarily.”
“She left her car,” Priya says.
Malia points at the board with half a dumpling. “And her wallet was left in the car.”
“And all her clothes and belongings were still in her apartment,” Aura adds as she takes a seat on another single sofa.
I look closer at the board. The photo in the middle is of a woman in her thirties, maybe, with dark hair, and she’s pretty and professional-looking. She has the kind of smile people use at work events when they’re trying to look relaxed for a camera they didn’t ask for.
Red string stretches from her photo to a timeline, a list of dates, and the name of her employer off to one side. Then it stretches to what looks like a gang.
Something in me goes still, feeling like this is too close to home.
I lower my fork, glancing at Clio while she says, “So what are we missing?” Then she heads back and sits down next to me on the couch with her plate of food in hand.
I lean toward her. “Clio.”
“Mm?” Still not looking my way.
“Sounds very similar to me, or could have been me, you know,” I whisper. “And then disappears.”
“But you didn’t,” she murmurs back quietly. “This is a local case,” she explains, the same volume. “Nothing to do with you or your boss. We’d been on it for a couple of weeks before you got here.”
I hold on to her stare for a second.
“Different case,” she says simply.
I pick my fork back up, knowing I’m being paranoid because Clio would never tell a soul what I shared with her. Still, the case feels familiar because what if I hadn’t left LA? Would I be the woman who’d gone missing?
“The financial angle is where it gets interesting,” Priya says, drawing my attention as she flips back two pages in her notepad. “Three large deposits into the employer’s personal accounts in the eight months before Rebecca’s complaint about the unknown sources.”
I think about invoices from my days at the job I ran away from. Retainer payments and what they look like when there’s nothing behind them. The particular way certain accounts moved through Lumen, Daniel’s company, that I never questioned because I was doing my job, not his.
“Did you check against any consultancy payments?” I ask. “Retainer invoices, anything framed as professional services?”
Priya’s pen stops tapping. “What kinds of services?”
“The kinds that look legitimate on paper and don’t have a deliverable attached.” I spear a piece of pulled pork and try to sound like I’m talking theoretically. “It’s a clean way to move money. Dress it up as a brand retainer or a consultancy fee, and it’s just a line item.”
The room falls quiet. Aura writes something in her notebook. Priya underlines something on hers and then writes three things underneath it fast.
