“Parents are scholars,” I said. “Probably would have been too if everything worked out the way I’d planned.”
“Nothing ever seems to go as planned.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “So I ended up being a private investigator instead.”
“Hot.”
I threw a pickle at him, but he caught it in his mouth, chomped down on it, and grinned.
“Is that what brought you to Chicago?” he asked. “An investigation?”
“Not quite.” I sipped the chocolate shake to cool off my tongue. “I’m here for a wedding and picked up an investigation in the process.”
“Anything juicy?”
“Quite.”
He lifted his hands when I didn’t elaborate. “I get it. It’s confidential. Also hot.”
We lapsed into silence as we ate more. I watched Jonathan pour the extra cheese sauce from the fries onto his half of the Big Beef.
“What’s up with you and Wolf?” I asked without preamble.
His shoulders stiffened. Sore spot.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just curious. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
For the first time since he’d brought the food over, he stopped eating, as if he’d suddenly lost his appetite. “My dad seems like a nice enough guy when you meet him. At least, he comes off that way to everyone else.”
“Is he… not nice?”
A muscle in Jonathan’s jaw twitched. “He’s a good liar. Let’s just say my entire childhood was a lie.”
“Can I ask how so?”
“You can ask,” he replied. “But don’t expect an answer. It’s the one thing I don’t talk about, for the sake of—”
“Your mental health,” I finished for him. “You know, I used to have stuff I never talked about either. I bottled it up until, one day, it exploded all over me. Don’t you dare say ‘hot.’”
That got a brief chuckle out of him. “I don’t bottle it up. I have a different method of de-stressing.”
“Do share.”
“Maybe on our second date.”
“This is a date?”
Before he fired back a reply, a dark-haired man came up behind Jonathan and pretended to choke him. “Yo, Godfrey! You made a Portillo’s run without inviting me? Rude, man.”
Jonathan ruffled his friend’s hair. “Jack, this is my friend, Logan Fields. We go all the way back to elementary school.”
“A lady friend,” Logan said, offering his hand to me. “Now I get why you didn’t invite me.”
He leaned over my hand as if to kiss it, but Jonathan pushed him away. As they tussled, I remembered where I’d seen Logan before. He’d come to Rodolfo’s with Jonathan the day before.
“Don’t be weird, man,” Jonathan said.
“I’m not, but don’t you think you should have taken her to a classier joint?” Logan turned to me and pressed a hand to his heart. “If you want someone to treat you like a real princess, I’ll take you out on the town.”
Jonathan kicked Logan’s shin beneath the table.
“Ow!” Logan hopped on his uninjured leg. “Okay, man, I can read a room. I’m outta here.”
As Logan limped away, Jonathan shook his head. “Sorry about him. Some of my friends don’t understand what respect means. Where were we?”
“We were debating whether or not this is a date.”
“Ah, yes.” He smiled, and the warmth of it melted me. “What can I do to convince you?”
Jonathan dropped me off in front of the Saint Angel and apologized for not walking me inside. Apparently, he had prior plans for the remainder of the evening. He didn’t try to kiss me, for which I was grateful. As much as I enjoyed his attention, I didn’t need the distraction. Besides, we lived on separate continents. No point in getting involved with someone who resided on the opposite side of an ocean.
For almost the entire “date,” thoughts of missing women and my investigation stayed at the back of my mind, but when I entered the lobby and spotted Fletcher Stevens yet again, everything came flooding back.
He waited in the hallway outside the first floor bar, watching Janine at the front desk as she directed another guest across the lobby. When she looked down, Fletcher dashed from his hiding spot and ducked behind the statue of Hamlet.
Casually, I headed toward the hotel bar then made a sharp turn behind the statue instead. I didn’t turn into the hidden hallway though, waiting around the corner as urgent whispers met my ears.
“You found it?” Wolf’s unmistakable tone echoed down the corridor. “Where was it?”
“In the alleyway outside,” Fletcher replied. “You have to be more careful, Wolf. If the police had spotted it—”
“I don’t know how it got there! I don’t even remember losing it.”
“Why don’t you wear it?” Fletcher suggested. “Wouldn’t that stop you from losing it?”
“Someone else wants it. If he sees me wearing it, he’ll know I have it.”
Fletcher sighed. “Then keep it hidden. I can’t have the police carting you off to prison.”
“This has nothing to do with the police.”
“They would think otherwise if they knew where I’d found it.”
My hip began to ache. As I adjusted my footing, my boot clanged against the metal plate affixed to the Hamlet sculpture.
“Shh!” Fletcher hissed. Footsteps crept my way.
I ran. Janine gave me a weird look as I sprinted across the lobby and up the steps to the mezzanine. Seconds after, Fletcher emerged from behind the statue. He glanced left and right but only saw Janine.
“Excuse me,” he said to her. “Did you see anyone come out this way?”
Janine’s gaze flickered up to where I stood on the mezzanine. “Nope.”
I sagged with relief as Fletcher returned to Wolf. When Janine glanced at me again, I nodded my thanks.
Whatever Fletcher found in that alleyway belonged to Wolf. Did that mean Wolf Godfrey had been at the scene of the crime when Megan died?
9
“Aren’t you finished decoding that thing yet?”
Evelyn, fresh from the shower, dried her hair with a towel. The sun slanted across the loft, welcoming another morning as I sat in bed with the half-ruined journal in
