Alna stood with her arms crossed, staring at the wall across from her. The room was simple, like one in a well-kept cabin. Made from boards of reddish wood, the entire room in it had a rather homey feeling which was only elevated by the flickering fireplace to her left, two unnecessary armchairs in front of it. Both were plush and grey, looking worn from years of use. Various papers and books surrounded the one on the right, giving off the impression that someone used it more as a place of work than as a place of relaxation. Even the side table next to it had a large stack of novels balanced on top, placed in no particular order in its little tower.

  Alna knew well that there was no logical reason to give off the impression of Marianna’s presence here of all places, in a room that existed solely in her mind, but as she kept being reminded, human emotions were far from logical. The suggestion that Marianna had been here not that long ago, fake though it was, had an interesting effect on Alna. A simple glance at “Marianna's armchair,” or the poem she’d written for Alna on Valentine’s Day, helped reign in her frustration, if only a bit.

  And Alna was feeling very frustrated, indeed.

  She observed the evidence wall across from her, observing it in the soft light emitting from the fireplace. The only light source she’d bothered to make.

  Three categories were written on the wall with white chalk: “Suspects,” “Still Possible,” and “Dismissed.” This allowed Alna to assess the current data, searching for anything she might have missed. Because she was definitely missing something.

  “Suspects” held only one name: Chase Bentley. After Marianna’s interview with Milo McKenzie, Alna had to admit that his involvement was unlikely. The man gave no indication that convinced Alna of his guilt and in truth, with the amount of money he made from his company, McKenzie had no real reason to kill for valuables. Even his finances attested to that.

  Bentley, though––he was worth looking into.

  “Still Possible” contained two names: Parker Wyatt and Milo McKenzie. Wyatt did, after all, engage in less than legal activities. But as time went by, and Alna did some more half-hearted research into the man, she became less and less convinced he had anything to do with the murders. He wasn’t exactly an upstanding citizen, given his dabbling with illegal drugs, but nothing in his demeanor when Alna interacted with him gave Alna the impression of a murderer. A bit on the violent side, yes, but that was when he’d seen a mugger (or worse) threatening two young girls. Alna could hardly fault him for that.

  Unnecessarily, Alna brought her hand up, rubbing at her eyes. When she looked up, it was to discover that her subconscious had erased Wyatt’s name from the “Still Possible” list, stubbornly moving it over to “Dismissed.” She had to smirk at that. If her own mind was rebelling against her, insisting that Wyatt was innocent, perhaps she should take the hint.

  Still, Alna wasn’t quite ready to move Milo McKenzie over to “Dismissed.” His connection to Teagan McKenzie was too familiar, and his inquiry about the book too well-timed, to be ignored. Alna would conduct some further research, all the while trying to find someone else to investigate.

  With one last glance at the “Dismissed,” which only contained Clair Zest’s name, Alna made her way to her armchair. She made a notebook appear out of thin air, a simple thing with a faux leather binding, and opened it in her lap. Note-taking was more Marianna’s self-appointed job in these investigations. But perhaps taking a second look at the facts in a more “physical” way would bring forth something Alna hadn’t thought about or overlooked. Unlikely, but certainly not impossible.

  An immeasurable amount of time later, Alna had written all the facts she deemed most important and––

  A sensation on her shoulder, definitely out of place in her mind. Marianna’s voice calling her name.

  Everything around Alna blurred––

  And she opened her eyes to see Marianna hovering over, blonde hair creating a curtain. Alna blinked once, a bit disorientated.

  “Well, good morning, my darling Whitlock,” Alna forced herself to say. The rest of her body was feeling strange (detached) and Alna knew she would be unable to move for a few minutes, while her body worked to catch up with her mind. The first time Marianna had witnessed the effects of lucid dreaming, she’d been ready to call nine-one-nine at a moment’s notice.

  Now, she massaged Alna’s arm, trying to help along the process of being able to move again.

  “Morning,” Marianna said, obviously wide awake.

  Alna shifted her gaze enough to spot Marianna’s biology textbook resting on the edge of the deck. She started studying almost as soon as she awoke, it appeared, preparing for the diploma exams that were coming up. After this weekend, Marianna only had another four days of schooling, and then she was done. Barring the exams and graduation ceremony, of course.

  It was a good thing, too, Alna thought. Between trying to solve the murders, Grand March practice, her job, and now studying, Marianna became overwhelmed from time to time. She’d even spent a couple of nights in the guest room, not wanting to keep Alna awake with her tossing and turning.

  Glancing toward the desk, Alna strained her eyes to see the digital clock, certain she had slept longer than intended. Not being able to turn her head yet was proving frustrating, but thankfully, Marianna noticed Alna’s agitated look and gave Alna a reassuring smile.

  “It’s a little after eight,” she said, squeezing Alna’s arm. “You were up late last night, so I turned your alarm off so you could get a bit more sleep.”

  If anyone else had done such a thing, Alna would have felt annoyed. Not that Marianna never annoyed her, but Marianna’s words proved an effective distraction as Alna gave her an incredulous look, pleased to note she was regaining her movement.

  “When did you learn my passcode?” Alna asked. She always protected her phone and laptop with the most complicated passcode she could come up with.

  Marianna gave her a fond smile, shifting as Alna sat up, bracing her back against the wall. “Alna, I live with you. We sleep in the same room and hardly a day goes by where we don’t see each other. Is the fact that I figured out your passcode really so surprising?”

  Alna eyed Marianna for a moment, not sure how to answer that question. She made her passcodes complicated to prevent people from figuring them out, even if they watched her type them. Evidently, Marianna was more observant than even Alna realized. She didn’t have it in her to be offended.

  “I suppose not,” Alna said, gripping Marianna’s waist and pulling her back down onto the bed. Marianna allowed this without complaint, resting her head on Alna’s shoulder.

  “So, did you find anything useful while you were depriving yourself of sleep?” Marianna asked, her hair gently tickling Alna’s neck.

  Alna ignored the light retort in Marianna’s voice, latching onto her question instead.

  “Yes, in fact.” She sat up, forcing Marianna to do the same, her earlier desire to relax in bed forgotten. Marianna sighed in fond exasperation, which Alna also ignored. Once Alna had grabbed her phone, sitting back against the wall, Marianna resumed her earlier position, draping an arm across Alna’s waist.

  “Chase Bentley,” Alna began, showing her a picture of the man in question.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  ***

  It took Marianna under three minutes to break them into Bentley’s farmhouse, and Alna felt no small amount of pride to see how far her girlfriend had come since Alna had begun her teachings. She’d gone from fumbling with the lock, frustrated and even frantic at how long it was taking her to open it, to becoming almost as adept as Alna herself.

  It was amazing to witness the transformation Marianna Whitlock had made over the past couple of years.

  “So is there anything specific we’re looking for?” Marianna asked once they had entered Bentley’s house––and assured themselves that the house was, indeed, empty.

  Alna shot Marianna a questioning look, which was met with a shrug. “Well, the painting and Ms. McKenzie’s book are still missing. So is the ring and rifle from Brigate Museum. I’m wondering if we’re expecting to find any of them.”

  Alna thought about her answer as she removed her too-large shoes and headed into Bentley’s kitchen. Unfortunately for them, Bentley wasn’t an unmarried bachelor. Rather, he had a wife and two kids, all of whom were away from the house, currently at school or work. Evidence of Bentley’s young girl and boy lay scattered without rhyme or rhythm throughout the house. There, on the kitchen table, was a plastic doll with two black braids and a white and blue plaid dress. More toys were lying along the white floor, consisting of more toy vehicles and items for doll care.

  Gender stereotypes, Alna thought. How annoying.

  “It’s unlikely,” Alna replied, making a vague gesture at the kitchen in its entirety. When she looked back at Marianna, it was to see her making a face.

  “Right,” Marianna said. Without another word, she turned back to the living room.

  Alna let her go, eyeing the kitchen. It was unlikely Bentley would hide his misdeeds in such a place as this, where the sun shone through the windows and flimsy white curtains shifted in the breeze coming in from a window left open. Ms. Bentley (or his children) would be at risk of finding such things.

  More likely, Bentley would keep such information in his office, if he had one. And if he was the type of man to adhere to gender stereotypes, then that office would be in the basement.

  Alna was already halfway across the kitchen before she called over her shoulder, “I’ll be in the basement. Let me know if there are any problems.”

  “Okay,” Marianna said in response, sounding distracted.

  If Alna had thought the main floor was a mess, it was nothing compared to the basement. It looked rather as though a bomb had gone off, or that a couple of children had gone running through a toy store, pulling toys off the shelves and tossing them onto the floor for no reason other than their own amusement. Much like the toys upstairs, there was an obvious difference between the ones considered masculine and feminine.

  The toys didn’t cover the entire floor, but it was a near thing. Bentley’s presence down here was evident only in the path through the toys, leading to a simple white door that presumably led to his office.

  Alna entered.

  This room was neater than what Alna had seen so far, and further proved Alna’s theory that Chase Bentley was quite the typical man. The furniture in this room was what many people would consider masculine: a hulking wooden desk stained a dark brown colour with a connected shelf. On the wall was a calendar with beautiful bikini-clad girls that had Alna’s lips pursing in disgust. The girls looked to be about Alna’s age. Chase Bentley was forty-six.

  Besides the calendar, nothing immediately jumped out at Alna that made her think Bentley was a criminal or a cold-blooded murderer.

  Out of everything in Bentley’s office, the most noteworthy thing was the miniature filing cabinet located underneath the desk. It consisted of two small drawers, both of which had locks on them.

  Alna approached the cabinet, her socked feet making nary a sound on the floor. She crouched down, reaching out a gloved hand. As predicted, both drawers were locked tight.

  Feeling distinctly displeased with herself, Alna tugged off her gloves and pulled out her phone. Stupid of her to leave the tools upstairs, she thought, but then again, Marianna was the one who’d needed them to get them into the house.

  Can you come downstairs, please? Alna typed, her thumbs flying over the keyboard.

  Marianna’s reply came a minute later: One sec.

  True to her words, Marianna’s footsteps appeared on the stairs moments later. Alna went out to meet her.

  “What’s up?” Marianna asked once she was in the basement, old, black purse hanging off her shoulder. Her blonde hair fell about her shoulders in a silky sheet of gold, having gotten a trim recently. After some discussion, the two girls had, once again, forgone any disguises. Bentley’s neighbours didn’t live close enough that they would see much of them anyway, and given that it was a regular workday, chances were most of them would be at work.

  “There’s a couple of locked drawers in Bentley’s office.” As she said this, Alna turned and headed back into the office in question, knowing Marianna would follow her. “I need your tools to open them.”

  When Alna looked over at Marianna, who was already pulling out the tools, her disappointment was palpable. “You don’t want me to do it.” Her eyebrows were pinched.

  Alna deliberately softened her expression. “This is a particular lock you have never practiced on before, and I don’t want to risk it taking too long.”

  Marianna relaxed a bit at that, although she still didn’t look all that happy. She handed Alna her purse.

  “Go ahead.”

  Alna grasped Marianna’s elbow to show her appreciation and wasted no time in unlocking the first drawer. It took less than a minute and soon Alna was staring down at various papers, standing up as though in a filing cabinet. She rifled through them.

  Behind her, Marianna shifted. “I’ll keep looking around,” she offered.

  “Hmm,” Alna hummed, too distracted to bother with a more eloquent reply. She didn’t look up as Marianna retreated.

  At first, there was nothing of note. Bentley kept various papers that he deemed important, sorting them by alphabetical order. Alna flipped through various bank statements and receipts. The bank statements she lingered on for a few moments, looking for any unusual influx of money. With no evidence of that, Alna allowed herself to hope that she would find some evidence of an offshore banking account, where Bently could smuggle his money with more efficiency.

  By this stage in her life, Alna should have learned that hoping for anything was almost pointless. She found no evidence of an unusual payment, a suspicious account, or any correspondence between Bentley and a partner or buyer.

  What she did find was a printed email from the government, detailing Bentley’s crime of not paying his taxes for five years. In no uncertain terms, the letter informed Bentley that he was to pay every dollar he owed in taxes, plus a rather hefty fine. The figure at the bottom was certainly enough to kill over.

  Alna took a picture of the email and placed it back where she’d found it. She pushed down any hope that arose as she locked the first drawer and set about unlocking the second one. For Bentley to keep his illicit papers in a locked drawer in his office made sense, but if Alna were in his position, she would have kept such papers in a place other than where she lived. An apartment, if she could afford one.

  Perhaps Bentley was smart enough to do so, in which case, it would be a matter of trying to find just where he would keep such damning evidence.

  The second drawer differed from the first, in that its content was much more personal. Alna pulled out a childish drawing of a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end. After a quick scan, she put the drawing away, continuing to search through the papers with a growing lack of enthusiasm.

  More personal effects that held no value to Alna: drawings from Bentley’s children, Christmas and birthday cards, and even an old piece of gift wrapping paper. Quite the sentimentalist, aren’t you? Alna thought with no small amount of irritation. She shoved aside yet another pointless piece of paper, pausing when she came across part of a newspaper.

  Don’t get your hopes up, she ordered herself, even as she began scanning the article Bentley deigned worthy of saving.

  Rare Batman Comic to be Sold in the Brigate Rec Centre.

  Interesting.

  On June 20th, an auction will be held in Brigate’s recreational centre. Although many items will be for sale, it is undeniably the most popular item is Detective Comics No. 27. This is the first comic where the well-known character of Batman, also known as Bruce Wayne, made his first appearance.

  Alna skimmed over most of the article, searching for anything of importance. She found it.

  Detective Comics No. 27 is now worth just over one million dollars….

  A smile curved her lips. Alna pulled out her phone.

  I believe I just found Bentley’s next target.