Lily looked around. "Where?"
"I wish I knew."
"Remind me to never play hide and seek with him."
"I will."
"Do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Play hide and seek with him?"
"Is this going to descend into one of those kinky sex conversations?"
Lily restrained a smile as she wrinkled her nose. "Only if you want it to."
"Maybe later." We crossed the street and I handed her the green tea. "We played hide and seek in the dark once. He found me really fast." I raised my hand and Lily high-fived me.
"Thanks for the tea. I wish it were wine."
"Me too."
"How's Juliet?"
"Bizarrely happy. She seems to be enjoying all the preps for the wedding."
"Did you see the cake?"
"No, but they had a bar."
Lily pouted. "Cruel."
"You work in a bar!"
"I curse it every day. Also, I'm going to stop working behind the bar. I think the baby is putting off customers."
"Why?"
"It's a reminder of what happens if you drink too much."
I laughed and took a sip of my coffee.
"Ruby is taking over. I'm staying in the office until I take maternity leave, then Ruby is going to co-manage until I come back."
"Ruby will be great."
"She's uber reliable and you know how hard it is to find good employees."
"I do," I said, thinking back to a recent case where an employee of Lily's staged a robbery, and relieved her of a large amount of cash. "Let's patrol around back. There's a lot going on here." We stepped onto the opposite sidewalk as another van sped past and halted behind the florist van.
"More flowers?" Lily frowned. I simply shrugged and tried not to make a show of enjoying my coffee while Lily pulled a face at her tea.
"She really took me literally when I said 'put on a show'."
"We do get to watch the show, right? It would be very disappointing to just sit watching the house all this time, without eating any cake, or seeing the wedding."
"You know the wedding won't actually take place?" We watched as two large terracotta pots with pink patio roses wrapped in gauzy, white ribbon were unloaded from the second florist van. They were carried over to the house and positioned on either side of the stoop.
"Are you sure about that? Juliet has a wedding dress."
"I think she has five."
"Exactly. He looks like a minister," Lily added, pointing to a man in a dark suit.
"That's one of Solomon's men," I said, recognizing him. I never had much interaction with the man, but I knew he worked in the risk department. It was on the floor above the private investigators' office where I formerly worked. I guessed Solomon had all eyes on the case today, since Lancaster Friedland could afford it, especially if we caught their insider trader at the same time as our stalker. I still harbored a hope that the two were really one person. "Solomon offered me my job back."
"I'm not surprised."
"Why? It's not like the agency has suffered in any way by my absence."
"Of course, it has! You were the only pretty one there."
"There's a nice looking woman in Risk."
"Do you think Solomon sexually harasses her too?"
"No!" I fixed Lily with my sternest look and she recoiled. "Just askin'," she said. "Don't hurt me. So are you going back to work for him again?"
"I don't know. Maybe. It's been harder than I thought to work alone, and I don't have any more cases lined up after this one."
"Maybe Juliet's friends will hire you. She must know a lot of people with money who have skeletons in their closets. Even if she doesn't, word will get around."
"I don't think the mortgage company will wait for word to get around."
"You can always pick up some shifts at the bar."
"Thanks, but no. That feels like a slide backwards."
"Even if it's my bar?"
"As soon as I left the temporary jobs, I worked really hard. I don't want to go back to casual work. I want to do this. I want to be a PI."
"Then take Solomon's offer and be a PI with a salary and a dental plan."
"Maybe I should."
"Did he ask you about his other offer?"
I sighed. "No."
"Have you spoken to him about it?"
"No, but I've thought about it a lot."
"That's not the same thing; and you know it, Lexi. Quit stalling and give the man an answer. It's not fair to keep him hanging."
"I'm not stalling. I'm thinking."
Lily stopped dead at the corner of the street. "Sometimes, Lexi, you think too much."
"No one's ever said that to me before." I looked around, catching sight of one of Solomon's men in a car at the intersection on the block opposite. I waved and Fletcher waved back. "Let's go this way," I said, indicating the opposite direction. "Penelope said she walked along here the night someone broke into Juliet's house."
"Yeah, you said she took a shortcut through the alley at the rear. Don't you think that's weird?"
"Taking a shortcut? No."
"I think it is. Since when do we ever walk in an alley at night?"
"This is Bedford Hills. It's not exactly Frederickstown," I said, echoing Penelope's words right before she was loaded into the ambulance.
"Even so, it's practically ingrained into us to never walk somewhere isolated."
"Yeah, it is strange; but Penelope was shot. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"All the same..." Lily and I paused at the entrance to the alley. We both gazed into the neat service road, bordered by tall fences and electronic gates.
"How did she plan on entering the house?" I wondered out loud. "There's no entry to the rear of the house, except via the garden gate, and that was locked. Plus, knowing your friend is already scared, you wouldn't go tap on the kitchen door, or would you?"
"Hell, no. You and I would scream the place down. Is there another access to Blossom Road?"
"Not that I recall. Let's walk the alley. Maybe we'll come up with an idea that makes sense. Penelope mentioned something about a side access. Maybe she intended to take that route around front."
"How is Penelope?"
"She's okay. They're keeping her in the hospital for a couple days just to make sure she recovers without complications. She was lucky."
"Is she coming to the wedding?"
"I don't know. Juliet and Rob invited her. I'm going to call the hospital again to check on her."
"We could give her a ride."
"That's generous of you."
"I thought we could keep an eye on her."
"We already eliminated her as a suspect." I speed-dialed the hospital and asked to be put through to Penelope's room. "Solomon interviewed her and she claims the person who shot her was a man, but she didn't get a good look."
"I'm sorry, Ms. Cera checked out this morning," said the nurse who answered when I asked for Penelope.
"Are you sure? I thought she was supposed to stay in today. She came in with a gunshot wound."
"She was healing very well; and the doctor was quite pleased with her progress."
"Okay, well, thanks." I hung up, turning to Lily as I stopped. "Apparently, she left already."
"That's good news!"
"Penelope said she was in agony last time we spoke. She must have improved substantially."
"Maybe a near death experience gave her a new lease of life," suggested Lily, adding darkly, "or maybe she was milking the injury?"