My Valentine, The Detective

A missing person, an obsessed lover, and a father that knows more than he's letting on. A case, of course, how else would J and Terra spend Valentine's Day?

“It’s been almost a half hour, darling,” I sighed, leaning my elbow on the fancy little table and looking over to J, who was sitting across from me. “Are you sure you picked the right place.”

“Of course I am, earth angel,” he replied, always confident in his estimations as usual. “I narrowed it down, if our new client’s not just paranoid then he’ll be here any minute now.”

“If you say so, flower. But maybe he won’t be, and they just have some trust issues to work out together. I mean, he didn’t even have any proof or anything.”

“A strong feeling is all it takes, gorgeous. As a private eye I can tell you a hunch goes a long way.”

I frowned. “Maybe in a relationship, trust goes a little further, honeybunch.”
Our thin, middle-aged French waiter returned.

“How’s everything with you two?” he asked, through his thick accent.

“Great,” J answered, leaning back in a high class-seeming posture. “These mozzarella sticks are to die for.”

“Anything else I may get you, little lovebirds?”

In order to blend in on this particular case, a mission that required us to survey Dakota’s most popular date spot, I had suggested J and I pretend to be a young couple on a date. So far so good, but being called ‘lovebirds’ by people three times our age still made me feel uneasy. J looked over to me.

“Oh, no thanks.” I said with an awkward forced smile.

“Lemme get a refill on this pepsi.” J ordered, raising up his now empty champagne glass.

“Right away, young sir.”

With a smile under his pencil-thin mustache, he walked away to fetch J’s drink. The detective watched him curiously.

“I swear his accent is phony…” he thought aloud.

“How much longer are we gonna wait here?” I sighed.

“Chill,” he replied. “It shouldn’t be much longer. We just need one picture then we can get out of here. Patience is the key, my… Uh, what letter are we on?”

“I.”

“Patience is the key, my idiomorphic diamond.”

I rolled my eyes, coincidentally just in time to see the small diner’s glass double doors open up to make way for our suspect: Greg Coleman, the man whose wife paid us to investigate her suspicions, which seemed validated by the fact he was holding hands with a beautiful woman who wasn’t his wife.

“What were saying about trust and all that?” J shot smugly, getting up from his seat and pulling his cellphone out. He walked over to my seat, put his arm around me and kissed my cheek, raising up his phone as if he were taking a selfie of us, but really taking several shots of the cheating couple.

“Tell me,” I began dryly. “Is your love for being right all the time in any way challenged when it causes the end of a marriage?”

“A little,” he answered with a shrug, looking over the imagines on his phone. “Then I remember I’m getting paid and it’s over.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Well, our job’s done here,” he said, putting the phone into his pocket. “Let’s make like the Colemans tonight and split.”

“Slow down, detective.” a woman’s voice called from behind us. We turned to see one of the waitresses, or at least this lady that was dressed like one. Aside from the fact that we hadn’t seen her this whole time, she looked like younger than anyone else on this place’s staff, assumedly somewhere in her early thirties. She was kind of pretty though, with long, dark brown hair and deep hazel eyes. She was smiling almost mischievously, and spoke with a vague sense of authority.

“Who are you?” J asked, unintimidated by her approach.

“Who I am isn’t important,” the woman replied. “But who it is that sent me, something tells me you already know.”

J frowned. “The creepy old guy, huh?”

The woman’s smile grew. “You can call me Nicole, if you must. Mr. Mathias has a case for you, J.”

He rolled his eyes. “Wait,” I interjected. “How did he know we were gonna be here?”

“Easy,” Nicole began. “With Valentine’s Day coming up, any private investigator would be getting a lot of cases involving marriage and fidelity, and would probably end up tailing someone’s significant other around. So Mr. Mathias called every popular date spot in the area and told them to be on lookout for a boy with big curly hair and a pretty little blond girl. And as soon as they saw you two, they called me. I borrowed the suit so I wouldn’t blow your cover, pretty cool huh?”

J raised a brow. “If Mathias had a case, couldn’t he have just called me on my phone or sent an email something?”

“Mr. M’s a busy man,” Nicole went on. “And besides, I wanted to meet the famous J for myself.”

She turned to me, her eyes widening with interest. “You’re B then, right?” she inquired excitedly.

“Uh, no,” I replied. “She lives the next town over.”

“Great,” J sighed. “We have a middle-aged fangirl.”

“Middle aged?” the woman shot back. “I’m only-” she stopped herself, then smiled at J again. “Nice try. You won’t get details about me that easily, but I can see Mr. M’s taught you well.”

J scoffed.

“What’s the case about this time?” I asked.

“A missing person,” the woman answered. “A young woman has suddenly lost touch with her new boyfriend, from what I gather.”

“Great, more romance.” J groaned.

“Any more details than that?” I asked. Nicole shrugged.

“That’s all the big boss would tell me. He wants you two to go meet with the client yourselves.”

“Sounds like him.” said J.

“Fair warning though,” the woman went on. “This girl’s apparently got a few screws loose.”

J and I stood before the giant metal gate, peering up at the huge, four-floor house behind it.

“Why is everyone we work for rich?” he asked, now staring at the marble fountain in their lawn.

“You sure they’re expecting us?” I asked, kind of nervous that we might get arrested for trespassing just by standing next to the gate.

“I don’t know about us specifically,” he answered. “They’re expecting a private investigator and his assistant, but Mathias does like to leave out the fact that we’re kids.”

“This’ll go over well.” I sighed, hitting the red button on the gate’s lock. The faint sound of electronic whirring alerted me to a tiny security camera on the side of the gate. After it stared us down for a second, the gate unlatched itself.

J and I walked across the cobblestone path leading to the front door. The door swung open before we even walked up the porch, revealing a middle-aged, well groomed man in an obnoxiously posh cardigan sweater and khakis. He had greying hair, crow’s feet, and an annoyed expression.

“Are you two selling cookies or something?” he shot impatiently, without so much as a greeting.

“Actually,” J replied. “We’re here to talk to someone. A Marcy Swinton?”

The wealthy man’s face suddenly changed, his interesting peaking and his demeanor becoming defensive.

He began, “What business do you have with my dau-”

“They’re here!” the shaky voice of a younger girl called out from behind him. He stepped to the side and said woman entered the frame, a thin, red-haired girl, rolling up in a high-class looking wheelchair. Okay, wasn’t expecting that. She was around her mid-20s, her face red and swollen, her sharp green eyes glossy, her right hand on the wheelchair’s joystick and her left hand clutching a clump of used tissues.

“You called for an investigator?” J asked the woman. “That would be me.”

Marcy Swinton looked puzzled. “But you’re-”

“Fifteen, yeah I noticed. Can we skip this whole part?”

“Wait a second,” her father said, looking J over more closely. “You’re the kid from the news. The one who found Tom Mason’s killer.”

J groaned. “Is that the only thing anyone remembers?”

“Please, come in.” Marcy said, turning herself around. Her father sighed and begrudgingly held the door open for us.

We followed her into a kitchen that was bigger than my bedroom and looked like it costed about the same as my entire house.

“So,” J said a we all took seats around the table. “Tell us from the beginning.”

Marcy took a deep breath. “It started four months ago,” she began. “That’s when I met Kevin, on one of those online dating sites.”

“Do you always use those?” J asked.

“No, it was the first time. I had just been in the car accident that broke both my legs. I lost my job, and my dad suggested I moved back in with him here. I was stuck here everyday, alone in this big house, feeling like my life was over…”

“So you got lonely, and wanted a quick, easy way to meet someone?”

“Right.”

“Well, how’d it go?”

Her face lit up into an entranced smile, her eyes staring off into space dreamily.

“Amazing! From the first date I knew it would all work out, it was such an amazing. Daddy never liked him, I couldn’t tell why but I never cared since he was so-”

“Amazing,” J cut her off. “Yeah, we got it. But he’s missing now, huh?”

I wanted to kick J under the table for being so blunt with her. Mr. Swinton, however, looked hardly interested in any of this. While she talked, he casually pulled out a box of mints and popped a few into his mouth while glancing at his watch.

“Yes,” she answered, her happiness instantly melting away and her voice beginning to shake again. “It’s been two weeks. First he stopped answering my calls, then his phone was disconnected, then I went to his apartment and saw it’s been cleared out. I called his job and they won’t tell me anything, then I went to the gym he used and asked around and they didn’t know anything either.”

“Wow,” J replied, sounding a little creeped out. “You really went through a lot of effort.”

“But it wasn’t enough,” Marcy seemingly started to break down. “I still have no idea where he is. Every day that goes by without him makes it harder to breathe, I don’t know how much more of this I can take!”

“Right…” J answered awkwardly, trying his best to back out of emotional territory. “Have you tried his family or friends?”

“I haven’t met any of them. We only went on private dates to places I’d rent out for the night. Outside of that we would only meet here or at his apartment. I don’t like to be seen by new people like this…”

J nudged me under the table. I looked over to him, and he ever discreetly motioned his eyes toward Marcy Swinton’s father, who was averting his eyes, getting increasingly awkward and uneasy as all the conversation of this ‘Kevin’ person went on.

“Don’t worry,” J reassured the near-frantic girl. “We’ll figure out what happened to your boyfriend.”

She didn’t seem any more relieved by his confidence.

“But first,” he continued. “Do you guys have a bathroom, somewhere? That was one long bus ride here.”

Mr. Swinton gave an annoyed sigh and pointed behind J. “To the right, up the stairs, then third door straight.”

“Gotcha,” J replied, getting out of his seat. “BRB. Terra, get all the info down while I’m gone.”

He got up and left, and I reached into my bag for my notepad and a pen. I handed them to the wheelbound girl.

“We’ll just need you to write down everything you know about him,” I explained. “Phone number, address, everything.”

She nodded and got to work, jotting as fast as she could. While she was busy with that, my eyes drifted back to her father, who still seemed uncomfortable with this whole process. What would a detective say here?

“So,” I tried, attempting to come off casual. “Where’s the mom of the house?”

Mr. Swinton glared at me. “We’re separated,” he answered. “Marcy and I haven’t spoken to her in years.”

“Oh…” I replied, not sure if I should say ‘sorry to hear that’ or something. “You must be really close with Marcy then, huh?”

“Of course,” he answered, without a hint of warmness in his tone. “My daughter is all I have left in this world. I’d do anything I can to keep her happy.”

His intensity seemed to increase on that last sentence, and something about the way he said it made it a lot less endearing and a lot more scary-sounding.

“Yo,” J called as he re-entered the room. “So where were we?”

“Just leaving,” Mr. Swinton answered dryly. “If you’re done questioning us.”

J raised a brow at the impatient man. “Sure,” he replied. “It looks like you guys told us all you know.”

“I’d be happy to show you to the door then.”

Marcy stayed behind as he did just that. In a moment, J and I were back on the big, granite porch of theirs with Mr. Swinton ready to close the door in our faces.

“Pretty insensitive,” J shot, causing the man to stop at the last second. “Your daughter’s boyfriend is missing and you show no signs of wanting to help at all.”

The man  sneered. “Maybe I don’t feel like entertaining two children who want to play detective.”

“Maybe,” J said, looking the man right in the eye. “Or maybe you know something about what happened to Kevin.”

Mr. Swinton tensed, his eyes narrowing on my headstrong friend.

“What are you implying?”

J shrugged nonchalantly.

“I got lost on the way to the bathroom,” he said with a grin. “Think I might’ve saw some things.”

“Like what?”

“Like the bathroom in the master bedroom that used to be your wife’s. There are no pictures of her left hanging anywhere in that house, just ones of you and your daughter, meaning the split was so bad you didn’t want to see her face anymore. But her bathroom is full of her old shower stuff, meaning you left it there because you couldn’t bear to get rid of it. Holding on to one small piece of her, because she’s the one who ended it and deep down you miss her. That right?”

Mr. Swinton’s face made it clear he was struggling to keep back his anger.

“But that’s not the thing,” J continued. “I also noticed a lot of foreign art hanging around the walls upstairs, yet you don’t strike me as a man with a love for a culture. Then there’s the six-hundred dollars worth of golf clubs hanging in your study, but the lack of grass stains on any of your shoes, which tells me you haven’t actually been golfing lately. And then there’s the collection of playbills, taking an interest in theatre now? Even one signed by the legendary Tennessee Williams, how much did that cost?”

“What is your point?” the man snapped, equal parts annoyed by J’s accusatory tone and invasion of his privacy.

“I was getting there,” J answered, his tone still calm and calculating. “All I’m saying is you seem to have more money than you know what to do with, and aren’t hesitant at all toward spending it. And I bet your failed marriage left you with a bitter outlook on the whole romance thing. I overheard you telling Terra you’d do anything to keep your daughter happy, and something tells me that might include paying some guy to disappear and never talk to your daughter again because you didn’t approve of their relationship.”

The man’s face went red at that accusation. The familiar confident grin spread over J’s face.

“Marcy did say you never liked Kevin.” he went on.

“You kids don’t know anything!” Mr. Swinton snapped. And with that he slammed the door in our face. J and I met eyes, and he simply shrugged again.

“That went well.”

Our next destination was a cyber cafe down the block. Judging by the decorum and personnel, it was run by young, artsy hipsters for sure. J absently stirred the contents of his caffeinated drink while I used my laptop to find as much information about this Kevin person as possible, which it turns out wasn’t a lot.

“No job history, no address, he’s a dead end,” I reported. “It’s like someone went through and erased him from the grid.”

“That happens sometimes,” J sighed. “When they get rid of someone and want to cover all tracks.”

“We’re dealing with experts then. The question is, why are they coming after normal-seeming Kevin?”

The only thing I could find online was his profile on the dating site with which he met Marcy Swinton. Whoever was determined to erase him from existence had seemed to forget this for some reason. Just our luck, the only thing on it was a few pictures of our new subject. It was easy to see why Marcy fell for him; he looked like a movie star. He was handsome and well groomed, every photo apparently catching him on his good side. Most of them were random selfies, outside after a jog or in his mirror preparing for a night out, but the last photo was professionally taken. You could practically see the sparkle on his teeth.

“He went out and had a photo taken?” J thought aloud. “He must really take online dating seriously.”

“Funny enough,” I said, looking at the dates of activity. “It says he met Marcy the day he made the account. After going through all that effort to make his profile look good, he just went with the first girl he found.”

“Maybe they were instant soul mates or something.” J said with a shrug. “In any case, we’re not gonna learn much more like this.”

“What now then?”

“There’s one more place we can go. They erased all of his information online, but they didn’t delete Marcy, and we know from her where he works. Or at least where he used to.”

He slid me the paper I had her fill out. I ran a quick search on the company name and found an address.

“Got it,” I confirmed. “From what I can tell it’s an office where, I guess, they market and promote some kind of weight loss pill.”

“Cool, an office,” J said, getting out of his seat. “I haven’t snuck into one of those for a long time.

The building was a lot smaller than I thought it’d be. From the outside it looked more like a small business that had just started up than an establishment in some big corporation.

“You sure this’ll work?” I asked, my trepidation suddenly getting the better of me.

He shrugged. “This plan has never once failed, in terms of getting into places.”

I patted my messenger back to double check that I had all of what we needed.

“Put on your game face, Tee.” He assured as we began crossing the street.

We walked over to the building and in through the glass double doors. Inside was no spectacle either; the floor tiles were grimy and in need of polishing, and a light panel above us was flickering. I hadn’t been in many office spaces before, but as far as my expectations went this was a dump. An old lady behind the front desk called out at us as soon as we entered the building,

“What are you kids doing here?”
She was a small woman, who had grey hair and wore those glasses with the string thing to keep it attached to your head, I guess. She was popping a few breath mints, and something about that seemed vaguely familiar, but before I could think about it I realized mints were probably not a productive detail to focus my attention on.

“We’re on a school assignment,” J answered her, trying to sound as innocent as possible. “We have to survey some adults in a modern workfield.”

The old lady raised a brow, I wasn’t sure if she was buying it or not.

“Do you have permission to be here?” she asked.

“Yeah,” J replied smoothly, pointing to me. “Her uncle invited us.”

I pulled out my phone and showed the lady a picture of Kevin. “Do you know where we can find him?”

“I see,” she said, apparently satisfied. “Head down that hall, make to right turns.”

“Got it,” J said, starting to walk. “Thanks.”

I sheepishly followed him, and as soon as we rounded the first corner I whispered,

“You’d think they’d have better security.”

Unfortunately, that old lady’s directions only seemed to get us lost. It didn’t help that all the halls were slim and every door in the building was pretty much indistinguishable. Eventually, though, we stumbled upon one of them that had a wave of chatter pushing through from the other side. Peeking through the glass window on the door, through the semi-opened blinds, we could make out a table of guys who appeared to be eating lunch.

“I guess this is the breakroom.” J whispered to me.

“Do any of those guys look like Kevin?” I asked, squinting harder as I stared through the slits.

“I can’t tell,” he answered, moving his head away from the window. “Only one way to find out.”

He grabbed the door handle and slowly turned it.

“What are we gonna say?” I whispered in panic.

“Chill. Just follow my lead.” he instructed. He opened the door and the two of us walked in. The chatter in the room quickly silenced and all eyes immediately turned to us. I quickly glanced around the room. Damn, no Kevin in sight.

“And just what exactly is this?” one of the suits, a tall, dark haired man, barked at us. He was a thin, well-kept guy, and his voice was surprisingly loud and commanding.

“This is the break room, right?” J replied, slipping right into character. “We’re selling cookies, and the lady at the desk told us to come here.”

A few of the guys laughed. “Well why didn’t you say so?” one of them called out excitedly.

J looked over to me and nodded. I reached into my bag and pulled out one of three boxes of Girl Scout cookies we’d picked up along the way, which J had described as the key component in this plan. All of a sudden we were welcomed with opened arms, everyone in the room pulling out their wallets and one of the guys even closing the doors behind us.

“How much is a box?”

“Do you have the caramel ones?”

“I’ll take three.”

If there’s any underappreciated lesson you learn as a freelance private investigator who happens to be a kid, it’s that there are very few adults you can’t get through to with sugary snacks.

“Oh, one more thing,” J segued. “While we’re here, has any one of you seen this guy before? Goes by Kevin.”

He held up his phone, with an image of Kevin displayed on the screen. Each face in the room became confused, yet everyone fell silent. It was the main guy that spoke up first.

“Uh, no,” he said hesitantly. “Can’t say I’ve seen his face before.”

He spoke with a certain uneasiness, a trepidation that usually accompanied bullshit. I knew J had to have noticed too.

The guy went on, “Why do you ask?”

J nonchalantly shrugged and slipped his phone back into his pocket.

“Nothing important,” he answered. “Just thought you guys might be able to help us out.”

His gaze suddenly focused, as he looked this man right in the eye.

“I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

As J said that, the suited man’s eyes shot wide open for a split second, his face a display of dumbfounded shock. In unison, every guy in the room jumped or twitched just enough to be noticed. One of them, with neckbeard and transition-lensed glances, rushed to swallow the bite of cookie still in his mouth and jumped up.

“That’s enough,” he sternly ordered. “We have work to do here, you kids need to leave.”

Where was all this ‘work’ a second ago? I thought. But I didn’t have the time to articulate any of these thoughts, as J and I were rushed out of the room immediately.

“Great,” I sighed, as we stepped off of the premises and onto the sidewalk. “Back to square one.”

“Square one?” J scoffed, with a hint of a grin and a familiar look in his eye. “Not at all.”

I stopped walking, causing him to do the same and look back at me with a brow raised.

“Uh, J” I said, somewhat impatiently. “Is there anything you wanna say right now?”

He simply smirked to himself and kept walking. “I’ll say it when we get on the bus.”

“What? Why?”

“Chill, a few extra minutes isn’t gonna kill you.”

“Ugh.” I did a quick sprint to catch up as we approached the bench.

As we sat down, J ran a hand through his hair, closed his eyes and leaned back in silent reflection. Not wanting to bother his train of thought or anything, I pulled out my phone and did a quick scroll through of all my social media to pass the time, seeing nothing but a floods of posts dedicated to significant others of all kinds, the most obnoxiously sincere of Valentine’s wishes. We’d been running around so much I’d sort of forgotten what day it was. For some reason I began feeling curious if J had to, or rather curious about what he would be doing today if we weren’t working on a case. I wondered if there was some girl I didn’t know about, who he’d be having dinner somewhere or seeing a movie with right.

Before I could even ask, the bus arrived. With a loud metallic screech, it slowed to a stop in front of us.

“I hate that sound.” J groaned, barely opening his eyes as he lead the way onto the vehicle.

The bus was surprisingly crowded today (I guess a lot of people going on romantic dates didn’t have cars to get there) so J and I had to walk toward the back. As we passed a few empty seats, however, he kept going. For whatever reason, he lead me to the one second to last, directly behind who appeared to be the only single person on the bus, a blond-haired pregnant woman with big sunglasses and her nose in a book.

“So…” I said, nudging him in the arm as we sat down. “You gonna say it now or what?”

“Fine,” he sighed, leaning his head back against the seat and closing his eyes again. “Solved.”

I waited for him to carry on and explain himself, but he remained silent.

“Uh, J…”

He repeated himself, louder and more deliberately. “I said solved.”

Before I could ask why he was clarifying himself, the pregnant woman in front of us turned around and hung her head over the seat to face us. As she removed the shades, I could then tell she wasn’t some random passenger; she was Nicole, from the restaurant.

“No way,” she exclaimed, sounding vastly impressed. “You knew I would be waiting here?”

“Duh,” J replied dryly, not even bothering to open his eyes. “You seem to like sneaking around and following us instead of interacting like a normal person, and I you had to come check our progress on the case. Next time, I suggest skipping the stupid disguises.”

“Spoilsport,” she groaned, taking off her blond wig. “You’ve figured this case out, then?”

“Yup.”

J finally raised his head and looked at the woman, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small, fancy little container of mints, holding it up as if it were some big clue. He must have grabbed it at the office building, but I had no idea why.

“Marcy Swinton’s boyfriend isn’t missing,” he began. “In fact, he never existed in the first place.”

The hell does that mean? I thought.

“The hell does that mean?” Nicole asked.

“It was all pretend,” J explained. “Those guys in that building aren’t just an office staff, they’re part of a theatre troupe.”

“Theatre?”

“Yeah. When they’re not selling diet pills, they’re on stage acting. ‘Kevin’ was just one of them playing a role.”

“Wait, what? Why would they do that?”

“It’s a little unusual, yes, but they were hired by someone with a lot of money.”

“And that would be…”

“Marcy’s dad.”

“Huh.”

Nicole and I simultaneously took a second to process that information.

“Okay,” she went on. “You’ve stated your conclusion, now make with the proof. C’mon, back up your claim.”

He shook the box of mints.

“First off,” he began. “The dude had no signs of existence anywhere on the internet before his online account he used to meet Marcy. Not because it was erased, but because it was never there. He made that account under a new name, purely for the purpose of connecting with that girl, and the reason his photos on it were so high quality was because he just used his acting headshots.”

“Interesting,” Nicole replied, staring off into space as she pondered. “Go on.”

“Secondly,” J continued. “Marcy’s dad didn’t seem worried about Kevin’s whereabouts at all. Terra and I noticed immediately how protective he was of his daughter after her incident, and how depressed she was, cooped up in that house all day, every day. In his own words he would do anything to make her happy. I looked around his house and found a few playbills - the little pamphlet things you get when you go see a play. There was only one playbill per show, meaning he saw them without his daughter, the perfect opportunity to find an actor with a face she didn’t recognize.”

“So dad saw a few plays and the guy who made the online dating profile could possibly be an actor. What’s the connection between them?”

“These mints. Both Marcy’s dad and the guys at the office had them. I bet they give them out at the theatre where these guys perform.”

Nicole frowned, clearly disappointed by that answer.

“Breath mints?” she shot. “That’s your evidence?”

“No, it was just the starting point of my theory. As soon as I noticed them at the office building, the same exact box and everything as the ones Mr. Swinton had, I figured it was too much of a coincidence. So, I tested something out. Alongside the tickets at the Swinton house I found a playbill for A Streetcar Named Desire, signed by its writer Tennessee Williams. The guy’s long dead, so I assumed a local theatre put on the show and auctioned it off, Marcy’s rich dad being the one to take it home. Fast forward to twenty minutes ago, when I showed the guys the headshots and referred to him as ‘Kevin’, they were all clearly on edge. Then, I quoted Streetcar, the last line of the show - the one about kindness from strangers. That set them all off, they rushed us out the room immediately, and that basically proved it.”

Nicole’s face lit up as she connected the dots in her head.

“Okay, I think I got it,” she clarified. “So Mr. Swinton saw a production of Streetcar, liked it so much he bought the collector’s item playbill, and while doing that he met the cast. Thinking of his daughter’s depression, he came up with the crazy idea of having the lead of the show pretend to date her, and they accepted. So they made a new name for him and a fake dating profile to reach out to her and set it all up. So then why did he disappear on her?”

J shrugged. “That girl fell in love, fast.”

Nicole raised a brow, and J explained, “She became borderline obsessed with him, he probably got creeped out and backed out of the deal. The actors thought they could just disappear from the situation, but Nicole reported ‘Kevin’ as a missing person, and somehow got in touch with your boss.”

Nicole reflected for a minute, finally understanding it all. “And you’re sure you’re right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” J replied. “You can take your word for it or have Mathias show up to the office with his badge, asking questions. They’ll get scared, crack, and tell you what I just told you.”

“Wow,” the woman laughed to herself. “So this whole case was just a waste of Mr. M’s time?”

“Pretty much,” J answered. “He probably figured it would be, which is likely why he brushed it off to me in the first place.”

She smiled at J, visibly impressed.

“You did good, kid,” she congratulated. “Guess everything they say about you is true.”

She slid her sunglasses back on as the bus neared its next stop.

“I’ll go report back to the big guy,” she said. “You go spend some quality time with your Valentine.”

“I don’t even have one.” J replied.

“No Valentine?” she chuckled as the bus screeched to a halt. “What else would you call it when a boy and a girl spend all of Valentine’s Day together?”

With that she stood up. “Later, detective.” she called back with a flutter of her fingers as she walked off the bus.

I awkwardly looked over to J, only to find his face confused by her remarks.

“What the heck did she mean by all that Valentine stuff?”

I was shocked. He seriously didn’t get it. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should take offense, but I was nonetheless baffled by his profound ability to figure out complicated cases, yet complete inability to understand the obvious.

“Wow…” I uttered, unable to hold it back.

“What,” he said, still oblivious. “Do you know what she meant?”

“No,” I sighed. “Not at all, Junebug.”