28. The Restaurant
The Restaurant
Icame back to the office invigorated to solve the case, but since then, two days have passed and nothing.
I hit a brick wall. I must’ve gone over all the evidence they would share with me fifty times.
And during that time, Belle became acidic; angry at me and herself for what happened.
I’m sure she got one hell of a talking-to when she met with her superiors.
Before I left her that night at the motel, she told me to focus on the thieves and not on the ones who attacked her; she said they were the key to solving this.
I didn’t understand why she said that then, but I think I do now.
So, that’s what I’ve been doing all morning: going over all the case files related to the thieves.
Every arrest and any detail that I might’ve overlooked.
Boring, I know. But someone has to do it.
In past cases, I’ve overlooked something that could’ve resulted in a lead.
Or even a breakthrough in the case. It was the middle of the week, and no other cases had sprung up either.
This allowed me to focus only on the APOLLO case.
The captain was happy about it. His prospects for mayor had gone up considerably again.
At around noon, I noticed a minor detail in the arrest report of one of the thieves.
He had written a restaurant as a place of employment; the address was familiar to me.
I did some further checking, and that’s when I noticed the license plate tag was reported stolen from there; well, the parking lot to be specific.
It wasn’t tied to any particular business.
And this guy also had the Paradise Motel listed as a previous address.
It wasn’t too far from the station, too.
I grabbed one of my yellow sticky notes and wrote the address.
A light tap hit the side of my desk as I slipped the note into my pocket.
I looked over and saw Jean, standing by the desk and sporting a smile.
“I heard you were on vacation,” Jean said.
“I was. For about a day,” I replied. “And you? Any progress on the barbershop homicide?”
“Yes, yes. Good progress. We found our guy. He’s in the county jail now. I came to ask you about the Collins case,” Jean said, grabbing one of the photos from the case.
“I managed to recover the jewels from the robbery; well, half of them at least. The past few days have been a whirlwind. I drove across the county, running down leads that led nowhere. I spent all day at the airport watching planes come and go. I did what I was asked to do and got taken off the case, by the way. Only to be brought back after the shootout at the Paradise Motel,” I said.
“I heard about that. It was wild. Something out of a movie set,” Jean said.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard it over the radio; that was until I heard the rapid gunfire.
And the screams. I was running down my own leads and finishing some paperwork, but I considered responding to it; unfortunately, I was on the other side of town talking to the family of the barbershop homicide. ”
“I was called after it all ended and dropped in. It was a chaotic scene. Spent shell casings littered the ground, and there were so many wounded I lost count. Those guys really did a number,” I said.
“They’re tied to the Collins case and the APOLLO robbery you’re investigating, right?”
“Yeah. It’s all connected,” I said. “These guys are dangerous. They belong to an international crime syndicate.”
“The thieves from the Collins case?”
“No. Not them. They hired local help,” I said.
“What happened to those guys then?”
“We found the thieves, but —” I replied.
“But what?”
“They were dead by the time we got to them. The Collins case has transformed into something else entirely. I’ll loop you in when I have time later, but right now, I have to run this lead down,” I said.
“Then my part in the case is done with the thieves dead and the feds taking over. Hmm,” Jean said.
“The feds have taken over all the cases associated with the one I’m working on now. That includes Collin’s. I’m sorry, but we’ll catch up later. I have to go to this restaurant,” I said.
“Restaurant? What restaurant? It’s almost lunchtime,” Jean said.
“A French fusion restaurant near here. I believe it’s called Le Mirage Bleu,” I replied.
“Great, I’m starving. I’ll come with you,” Jean replied. He walked over to his desk and picked up an old beige jacket.
“I’m not going on a lunch break, Jean.”
“You’ve got to eat,” Jean said.
“Right,” I replied.
Jean was always hungry. And he never turned down food if offered. On occasions, like today, he would even invite himself to a function if food was involved, so I wasn’t surprised by his insistence on coming. It was obvious he was more interested in running up a tab than running down my lead.