Penny ~ A Romantic Kind Of Story

Chapter 11 // We could work for a detective agency

"Okay, so what do we do?" Lacey asks excitedly but as quiet as she could.

We had sneaked into my dad's office to try to find any kind of clues of what he was hiding. He was at work until seven, so we had about an hour to play detectives.

"Why are you whispering? He's not home." I said while rolling my eyes.

"Because it makes it more exciting!" She continued to whisper, like we were in the middle of an action movie.

"Whatever, silly." I said and walked up to my dad's office table. It was filled with stacks of papers and tons of other stuff that I had no idea what they were. I started going through the first stack of paper, but there were only bills and receipts. Then I went through the second stack of paper but it was no luck there either. Maybe this wasn't a good idea, because it would take hours to try to find something useful.

But then I remembered, what Cole had said, that finding his calendar would be helpful. I started to get my hopes back and stopped digging around in his stack of bills and receipts.

"Hey, Lacey! We have to look for his calendar and see if he have written some information down about his trip and what he was doing!" I said, almost shouting.

"Yes, yes, that's an awesome idea! But please keep your frikkin' voice down!" She whispered as loud as a whisper can be and spit was shouting out from her mouth. She obviously still thought we were on some super-mega-secret-mission.

We started digging through his desk drawers but as gently as we possibly could, because we didn't want him to know that we had been in his desk. But I had to say that he was quite unorganized so he probably wouldn't notice anyway.

"Aha!" Lacey said pleased and grinned at me while holding a black calendar.

"Perfect." I said, grinning back at her and reaching for the calendar. I could now feel how the excitement took over my body and I opened it eagerly, and quickly flipped through the pages. It was filled with writing and side notes and it was really hard to see what he had written. I stopped flipping through the pages when I reached May month, and looked more closely into the dates. And there, under the date May 12th, he had written down a name.

"Lacey, look at this!" I said and pulled her to me.

"Wait, who's John Stevens?" She said, looking like a question mark.

"I have no idea, but I bet he has something to do with this whole thing. I mean, dad was seeing him the weekend he was away and his name is the only note during that week in the calendar. It has to mean something, right?" I said and looked at her.

"It's great! This is great, Pen! We are like, actual detectives!" Lacey said and jumped up and down with excitement for a while, but then stopped and turned around to face me. "So.. How do we go from here?"

**

Lacey and I had been lying on my bedroom floor, busy with computers, notebooks and copies of the pages of my dad's calendar the entire evening. We had locked the bedroom door to make sure that dad wasn't going to caught us and were now desperately trying to find more clues about John Stevens.

"We should check your dad's list of friends on Facebook! Maybe they're friends?" Lacey said and you could almost see a light bulb appearing over her head.

"Why would he be friends with this anonymous person he had a meeting with that one time?" I said and rolled my eyes. We were standing completely still, and we needed to get more clues to move forward.

"Wait, where did you say your father went on his trip?" Lacey suddenly said and started to type something in on the computer really fast.

"San Diego. Why?"

She was now typing even faster, and had gotten the little wrinkle between her eyes she always got when she was deeply concentrated.

"Here he is! John Stevens, San Diego, CA!" She shouted and pulled me closer to her so that I could see her screen.

What I saw was a man in his forties, with a nice suit and a portfolio, smiling at the camera. He definitely looked like someone who my dad could have a meeting with.

"So what do you think? Should I send a friend request?" Lacey asked.

"What? You can't just do that! Plus he's never going to accept it, he doesn't know who we are." I said and felt how all the hope disappeared.

"Yeah.. But that's why I created a fake one! Look at this! Bill Allen, 43 and works at Brown & McKenzie's Law Firm in San Diego. He has two children and is happily married. And I used a picture of my dad's cousin!" She said, almost stumbling over the words.

"Of Course you have, genius!" I said and pushed her lightly on her shoulder. "But.. How do we know he's going to accept? I mean, they don't exactly know each other." I said and looked questioningly at Lacey.

"Oh, but they work at the same job! And according to my research, Brown & McKenzie's is the leading law firm in San Diego so it has to be quite big.. And therefore John Stevens wouldn't probably have met our Bill Allen yet but sees that they work at the same job and accepts his request anyway!" She answered and with eyes shining brighter than the daylight.

"I have to admit it.. You make a pretty damn good detective, Lacey Madison Watkins." I said with a huge smile.

After another two hours Lacey went home, and I was pretty exhausted from all that work. All we could do know was to wait for John Stevens to accept our friend request, but until then we had decided to put is aside for a little while, so that we could focus on other things as well including the finals. The finals! I hadn't even dedicated one single thought about it yet, when everyone else were locked up inside their rooms studying their asses off. Great, Pen, just great.

But even so, I was way too tired to open my textbooks now, and the finals were going to be held next week anyway, so I decided to start my "I don't talk to anyone-being locked up inside my room for a week and only living on energy bars-" kind of studying tomorrow instead.

Instead I went downstairs, brushed my teeth and took a quick shower, said goodnight to dad who was watching the ESPN as usual, and then went straight to bed. But I couldn't sleep right away, because I couldn't stop thinking about John Stevens even though we had decided to not think about it for a while. But what if we were completely wrong? What if he wasn't involved in this at all? Just because his name was in the calendar?

I could now feel how my eyelids got heavier and heavier and all the thoughts inside my head suddenly vanished and were instead replaced by rainbows, cute puppies and other things that the world of dreams had to offer.

**

Here is chapter 11 and I'm so so sorry it took this long for it to be published! But hey, don't worry, I'm not leaving this story behind ;)

So what are your thoughts about John Stevens? Do you think he has something to do with her dad's secret?

Hope you have an AWESOME day you all beautiful!

Kisses, S