"Could I have a-"
"Double mocha latte with a chocolate chip biscuit." Finished Robin. "Great, your drink'll be here soon."
"Anyway," Jess continued, after he was out of earshot. "We had the same question, so we got to thinking. That night, did you take the front museum entrance?"
"No, I took the back astronomy entrance. Ms. Pepper gave me the key so that I-" He trailed off. "And she was the last person to go through the hall. She locked the door behind her."
"Exactly," Jess continued. "And isn't it really convenient for her that the cameras that were linked to her office just "conveniently" didn't have night vision? The same cameras that were "conveniently" looped during the first party?"
"I don't.. Why would she want to frame me?" Xeno racked his brain for anything that he'd done wrong, or against the museum.
"Maybe she worked out that you and I were working together to find out who killed Steve at that first party?" Haiden piped up again. "I mean, if she's doing all this, we can assume that it was her the first time, right?"
Oh.
"Yeah, I kind of told her." Xeno felt immensely embarrassed. In his defence, he'd been trying to win her favour.
"Did you tell her it was with me?" Haiden asked, anxious.
"I didn't say your name. For all she knows, I could be working with any of your friends from palaeontology."
"Xeno's questionable decisions aside," began Jess, "I knew that wasn't enough proof to go on, so I got Haiden to ask Mr. Crossley about that whole overtime thing."
"And he said that.." He continued her statement, "that he hadn't had to do anything like that, and it was weird that she'd said it was a museum tradition when no one else had had to do it."
"Wait; does that mean that she was the one who destroyed Steve, as well as the one who dumped his.. remains on the floor of the main hall?"
"It seems likely." Concluded Jess.
"But most of this evidence is hearsay; we don't even have a motive. We'd need something concrete if we wanted to prove she was guilty." Xeno mused. "If we're even right, that is."
"We'd probably also stop the sabotages, and maybe even save our departments." Haiden added.
"Why'd you both come here anyway? How'd you know I was here?" He reiterated.
"It was a lucky guess on my part." Haiden admitted. "I remembered you telling me about your dad's bakery, and I thought you might come back here. Also, I saw your car outside."
"And why are you here?" He turned to Jess.
She turned her head up from her sketchbook and looked right at him, annoyed. "Where's our "thank you"? We literally just teamed up to get you your job back, and prove that it wasn't you that dumped all that crap on the ground. Not that you made it any easier for us, you didn't pick up a single one of my texts!"
"Or mine." Haiden added.
"Your drinks?" Their heads all whipped around to see Robin, holding a tray with three cups of coffee on it.
"Thank you." Xeno said, taking the tray from him and angling it on the table so they could all drink.
After he had left, he continued. "Thank you. I'm sorry I didn't pick your texts up, I didn't want the reminder. It was still toofresh in my mind. But as for saving my job, there's no way we could possibly get enough proof that it was Mrs. Pepper. Not unless I could sneak into her office somehow and download that camera footage myself, but I'm banned from the museum, remember?
"We aren't." Haiden said. "Jess, you could distract her while I got the footage off of her computer. I could put it on a USB?" he suggested.
"That isn't a bad idea, Haiden." Jess continued.
"You'd do that for me?" he asked.
"Of course. What are.. friends for?" Haiden looked at him and smiled, weakly yet warmly, and Xeno could have sworn he winked a little.
"Guys, we don't know her computer password. It's a nice thought, but I don't think we could, anyway." Jess frowned.
