Chapter Eleven
Elyse
“Elyse, what’s up?” Johnathan peered his head over my cubicle, interrupting another deep search that I was in the middle of, but at this point I still couldn’t find a thing.
I mean how could I find anything when I had absolutely no information other than one single name?
One single popular male’s name. But that wasn’t true.
I knew more than that. I knew that he had a private island or at least he told my naive sister that he had a private island.
“I don’t suppose you know anyone by the name of Henry, that lives in New York and owns a private island?” I said.
Johnathan furrowed his brow and pursed his lips as he instantly popped down from the top of the cubicle only to reappear, behind me, wheeling his chair next to my desk.
“Now if this is a case, this is something very intriguing that I must know about,” he said, leaning back, crossing his arms and legs.
He was definitely waiting for some elaborate spill about something that I was most definitely not going to give him.
Not because he wasn’t trustworthy. I’d trust Johnathan with my life, and I had on many occasions.
He was my right-hand man on a lot of cases.
But this was not a case. This was a simple welfare check for my sister, which, yes, I did know was technically illegal or maybe it wasn’t completely illegal, I did have the access to do this after all.
I guess this was more of what you would call highly frowned upon, particularly by Johnathon, the ultimate rule follower.
Not that there was anything wrong with following the rules.
I believed in following the rules, and more than the rules I believed in following the law, which was the very reason I had chosen my detective career in the first place.
And it was the very reason that I was the most sought out detective in the whole of Philadelphia, alongside Johnathan.
There wasn’t a single case that we had not closed with the appropriate prosecution, I might add.
Maybe it was about time that I asked for another raise.
But still, even with my impeccable track record, I couldn’t find a single thing on this guy named Henry, who supposedly owned a private island that was believed to be somewhere off the coast of New York.
The more I searched I couldn’t seem to find anything, not a single thing.
Nothing at all. I began to panic. God Molly, you want to hope you’re not in trouble, girl.
I stared blankly at the computer hands on the keyboard, completely ignoring Johnathan scanning both my screens that had “Henry Private Island” and “Henry New York Billionaire,” into every government search records that I had access to.
Maybe that was the problem. Maybe I needed access to some restricted pages.
Maybe I needed to call in someone from the FBI.
“You know, this is really funny. Because last time I checked I was briefed into every single case that passed your desk, but it really looks like you’ve kept me out of the loop of this one, because I don’t really know anything about a man called Henry who is a billionaire and owns a private island.
Is this some Jeffery Epstein shit that you’ve been called in on and I’ve been left out of the loop?
” he said, watching me intently, waiting for me to simply blink in the wrong direction to catch me out of my lie.
“You’d want to fucking hope not,” I scoffed, keeping my eyes locked on my screen as Johnathan kept all his attention on me.
“Oh right, so you’re also being called in on New York cases now, too? Because last time I checked it was just Philly,” said Johnathan. Urgh, he was not going to drop this.
I sighed, pushing my chair away from my desk, turning to face him. “Look, I’m sorry this is a question that I shouldn’t have even asked you and it doesn’t concern you. It’s more of a private matter, so I think you can go back to your own paperwork now. Thank you.”
Johnathan pursed his lips biting the inside of his cheeks, as he squinted back at me. I hated when he did that. Trying to read my very expression.
“What is this about, Elyse? Have you got some billionaire trying to chat you up? Chase you down? Is this something that I should be alerting Jordan about?” he said. I rolled my eyes turning back to my desk.
“No, it’s not me that he’s tracking down, but he’s got my naive sister,” I said outwardly, scoffing again. Fuck. He didn’t even need to say too much to get it out of me, Johnathan knew me too well, he knew the exact buttons that he could press for me to tell him anything that he wanted.
“Ahah, so now the truth comes out,” he says with a smile, proud of himself. I guess I was the master detective, but he was the master manipulator when it came to our successful duo. I rolled my eyes again.
“Nice work, you got the answers that you wanted, now like I said, finish up your paperwork would you because I’m ready for our next case.”
Johnathan laughed, “You’re ready for our next case? Because it seems like you’ve already got yours,” he said pointing back to the screen.
“Yeah, and it is obviously not going very well. So, give me something more worthwhile that I can actually sink my teeth into.”
“What? You’re giving up already and admitting that searching the private records for a man who you only seem to know his first name, the state that he lives in, his supposed net worth isn’t really the most productive way to try and find out about your sister’s new love interest?”
“Look, Johnathan, I’m not even going to try and explain this to you because I know that you don’t have the capacity to understand.
You don’t have any siblings. Other than my husband, she’s the only family that I have.
And I am sure if you were in my situation, purely just because you cared, you would do a quick check over to see if there was anything to find out about the person your sister was dating. ”
Johnathan sighed and nodded his head, he knew enough about my family history, and about the mother that I became to my little sister so young.
“So, Molly’s dating a billionaire, but you don’t know the guy’s last name?”
“Correct, but he owns a private island. So, let’s get real here, there should be something on here about him. To have that much money and to own a piece of private land, surely, I should be able to find some legal documents somewhere.”
“Is that really what you want to find? Legal documents about pieces of land this bloke owns or are you trying to find some dirt on this guy?” I didn’t answer his question, because I didn’t need to, he knew full well that I was trying to find something out about this man that I only knew four main facts about and that my sister had become completely smitten over this stranger in a matter of weeks and that to me read, red flags and love bombing, and a heart broken Molly was not an issue that I wanted to deal with… ever.
“You are really smart, Elyse, but sometimes you’re so tunnel vision. I bet that you didn’t even do a Google search on this guy? You went straight to the government records. God, what are you expecting to find that your sister’s new lover is a convicted felon?”
My cheeks turned pink as I bit my lips together, quickly opening up a new search tab as I began furiously typing: Henry New York Billionaire, into the search bar.
Johnathan pulled his phone out of his back pocket and began typing away.
“Oh, got him,” he said before I even had a chance to properly read through my search results.
“Oh, and there’s even a picture here with your sister.
Wow, he is quite attractive. Molly's scored herself quite the man. And they look good together?”
“What? What did you find? Show me, show me now!” I said trying to reach for his phone. “How did you find something so quick?”
“It’s not exactly rocket science, you go to your sister’s Instagram account, search for any Henrys that she’s recently followed and right there he is, with a bright blue tick next to his name,” said Johnathan as he finally handed me his phone.
And there he was, I was staring right at this mystery man who my sister has decided that she would galivant around with. Johnathan wheeled my chair back and out of the way of the computer screen as my eyes became fixated on the small round picture on @mrhenrybentley’s Instagram page.
Of course he had a blue tick. Wow, holy shit, this guy two and a half a million followers.
How had I never heard of him before? Whoever the hell he was, he obviously wasn’t a social media show pony as with that many followers.
He only had three pictures on his page. It was strange, but that gave me a little more comfort thinking that he was more of a private man.
But there was still a lot more that I wanted to find out about this guy before I felt comfortable about this situation.
Not that there was much that I could do about it now.
Molly was probably already out to sea with him. Another reason as to why I should have got her to accept me on find my friends. But that was okay. I could track down her phone if I needed to. In fact, I should probably do it after a little more stalking.