Relief smoothed his features. "In all honesty, I wanted to check on you. I had a suspicion that if your boss told you about those skateboarders in the park, you might do something stupid, like confront them."

  Oh. He must mean those skateboarders in the park that I'd confronted. That hadn't been so stupid. That had been much less stupid than breaking into Sunshine's yoga studio. I wasn't going to admit to that either. Come to think of it, I'd had lots of stupid items on my to-do list recently, and I'd managed to get to all of them.

  I let my eyes go wide. "What skateboarders?"

  "Not important," he said. "Can you tell me what happened?"

  I shook my head, carefully. "All I know is I turned to lock the front door after I came in, and someone bashed me in the head."

  He rubbed a hand along his jawline. His eyes were flinty. "This can't continue, Miss Hudson."

  Was he saying this was my fault? I hadn't hit myself on the head. I glared at him. "What can't continue? Entering my own house?"

  "Staying here. Alone. You can't do it."

  "I can't do it?" I repeated.

  His eyes softened. "Let's just say I would prefer that you didn't. Not until we figure out what's going on here."

  We? That sounded like an offer of help. I wouldn't mind getting a little help from Watson. He had experience. He had knowledge. He had killer good looks. And he wasn't wrong. I'd been lucky so far. That luck could run out at any time.

  It almost had.

  He had his cell phone to his ear. "221 Baker Street," he was saying. He listened for a moment. "That's right. Thank you." He disconnected. "The police are on the way."

  "The police?" I sat up again. "Do you think that's necessary?"

  "Yes, Miss Hudson, I do," he said. "This is the second time someone has broken into this place. That you know of."

  "Marty," I said absently. A shiver ran through me. I hadn't considered that break-ins might also have happened while I was away, but it was entirely possible. There were plenty of days and nights that the house sat empty. Still, it wasn't Buckingham Palace. How long could it take to find something in a house this size? These multiple return visits didn't suggest to me a blazing intellect.

  Unless what he was looking for was me.

  Oh boy.

  "Tell me something," Watson said. "Was the door locked when you got here? Did you have to unlock it to come in?"

  I pulled my focus back to the issue at hand. "I'm sure it was. I wouldn't have come in otherwise."

  His expression was pure skepticism. "Even though you're a ninja private investigator?"

  Oh, good. Humor at inappropriate times. Just what the situation called for.

  "Laugh all you want," I told him. "But this is a serious situation."

  Someone knocked on the front door. Watson went to answer it and came back with Detective Lestrade and an entourage of two other officers. Lestrade hadn't changed much. His brown suit hung on his gaunt frame without flattering it. His eyes were watchful. He had the barest traces of a five o'clock shadow.

  Lestrade directed the first officer to the back door. The second one broke off and went upstairs. I heard him moving from room to room, clearing the house.

  Lestrade sat on the far end of the sofa. Watson pulled a wing chair close to me and sat down, leaning forward on his forearms. Maybe I was wrong, but that felt like a protective stance.

  "Why don't you tell me what happened?" Lestrade said.

  As usual, he didn't seem all that interested, but I told him anyway. He made some notes without interrupting. No nodding, no head shaking, no stony are-you-kidding-me stares. When I was done, he said, "Have any kind of description?"

  I shook my head. "He came up behind me. I never saw him."

  "A trained investigator like you noticed no details?"

  That again.

  "Maybe you saw a sleeve," he said. "A hand. A flash of color."

  I was seeing a flash of color, alright. Red. "I told you, I was attacked from behind."

  "I guess even trained PIs can be ambushed," he said.

  I pressed my lips together and didn't say anything.

  After a moment, he said, "I understand this is the second time."

  I glanced at Watson and nodded. "I don't know what they could be looking for."

  "Maybe nothing." Lestrade snapped his notebook shut. "Could be a crime of opportunity. Empty house, iffy neighborhood. It happens."

  I bristled. Iffy neighborhood?

  "I don't think it's random," Watson cut in. "Who would risk repeatedly breaking into the same house? She could have gotten a security system after the first time. Or a dog."

  My thoughts went immediately to Toby, living the good life at Sunshine Moonbeam's house. And then they went to Sunshine Moonbeam. No way she could have beaten me to the house. She only thought she had a magic carpet. She was 70-something years old, after all. I'd like to think I could walk faster than a 70-something-year-old.

  Except I'd taken the scenic route back to the house; I hadn't followed a direct path. Pretty much anyone could have gotten back ahead of me.

  "It seems that someone is after something here," Watson was saying.

  "Or someone," I added. That someone would have to be me. I wondered if that meant I was getting close to the killer. Unfortunately, the killer was putting a whole lot more stock in my deductive abilities than he should, since I still had no idea who he was. Or she.

  I was suddenly having second thoughts about the whole PI thing. I was no PI, ninja or otherwise. I was a barista who lived in a grimy apartment building and had a best friend with too much imagination and time on her hands.

  I realized Watson was staring at me with a frown. So it hadn't occurred to him that I might be the target. I wished it hadn't occurred to me.

  The first uniformed officer ducked back into the room. "Looks like the back door was forced open," he informed his superior.

  Lestrade didn't look surprised. "Let's get it dusted for prints," he directed.

  The officer nodded and disappeared toward the back again.

  Lestrade stood. "We'll let you know if anything comes up on the prints. And we'll send an extra patrol car around. Keep an eye on the place. Meantime, you might want to think about staying somewhere else."

  "That's it?" I stared at him. "An extra patrol car?"

  "If we get a hit from IAFIS, I'll look into it," he said. "Until then, it's the best I can do." He nodded in Watson's direction and then left.

  Watson and I sat in silence for a couple of beats.

  "He was very helpful," Watson said finally.

  I looked at him.

  "I never realized what a people person Detective Lestrade is," he said.

  I grinned. Watson had a sense of humor. Who knew?

  "At any rate, since I'm the one without the head injury," he continued, "I'm going to insist that you don't sleep alone tonight."

  Finally, the sign of life I'd been waiting for. Not exactly the way I'd imagined the grand seduction taking place, but it was better than nothing. I wasn't going to argue if he wanted to keep me awake for my own good.

  "Someone needs to watch you for signs of a concussion," he said.

  That was kind of cute; he felt like he had to make excuses. We could call it doctor's orders. That was good enough for me. I tried to remember if I had enough clean towels in the linen closet upstairs. And were the bed sheets fresh? And was it too early to go to bed?

  The front door opened again, and Irene yelled, "Marty?"

  Watson stood up. "I called your colleague to take you home with her for the night."

  It just wasn't my day.

  * * *

  "I can't believe this." Irene dropped her keys on the quartz countertop and headed for the refrigerator. "Do you have any idea who might have done it?"

  I sat on a stool facing her and leaned on my elbows. "None. I didn't even get a glimpse before I was knocked out."

  She poured apple juice into a glass and shoved it over to me before pouring herself a glass of wine. "This is scary stuff, Marty. You could have been really hurt. Or worse."

  I didn't want to go there. I looked at the glass. "Apple juice? Really?"

  "Doctor's orders," she said. She slid onto a stool. "Speaking of which, imagine my surprise when Watson called. What was he doing there anyway?"

  "Saving me from myself, apparently." I took a sip. Wine would have been better. "He was afraid I'd confront the skateboarders."

  "Which of course you did."

  "Which of course I did," I agreed. "And I also found Toby."

  Her eyes went wide. "What? Don't tell me Rabid took him. Is he okay?"

  "Better than okay," I said. "He looks great. He's with Sunshine." I told her about my visit to the yoga studio and my conversation with the former Valerie Abbott.

  Irene was on her second glass of wine by the time I stopped talking. "This is incredible," she said. "I remember seeing an article on Facebook about her. Sunshine is Valerie Abbott. Wow." She shook her head. "Kate sure lived a colorful life."

  That was putting it mildly. I wondered how she'd gone from independent call girl to cranky hoarder.

  "So Sunshine was afraid that Kate would expose her and ruin her?" Irene tapped the rim of her glass against her lower teeth, thinking. "That's certainly possible. She had a lot to lose. I looked into the studio closer, and it turns out Sunshine's net worth is into seven figures." She noticed my surprise. "Diversification's the name of her game. We know she wasn't always teaching yoga in the park. She was a businesswoman who apparently invested well." She smirked. "It seems Sunshine knows what time it is after all."

  I dug a pen and scrap paper from my handbag. "So we've got Sunshine, Rabid, and Albert Fong." I wrote down their names. "Kate got Rabid arrested. And she might have threatened to expose Sunshine as Valerie Abbott." I jotted these factoids next to each name as potential motives.

  "And then there's Albert Fong," Irene said. "Mr. Mafia. Maybe Kate knew a little too much about his criminal dealings."

  I thought of the ginger lily under her nails. "She might have even found evidence at the tea shop that would incriminate him of a crime."

  Irene nodded her agreement.

  "Sunshine overheard Kate telling Albert Fong that she was going to put a stop to criminal activity in the park," I said. "She took it personally, but maybe that comment wasn't about her at all."

  "Maybe it was about him," Irene agreed. "It's starting to sound like Albert Fong's our guy."

  And not for the first time. Which meant potentially tangling with Heckle and Jeckle again. I wasn't ready for that. I might never be ready for that.

  Still, as much as I distrusted Albert Fong, something didn't add up. Problem was, I couldn't quite put my finger on what that something was. I felt like it was dangling right at the edge of my memory, but when I reached for it, it evaporated.

  Irene was watching me. "What's wrong?"

  I sighed. "I'm overlooking something. I can feel it."

  "What you're feeling is that watermelon on the back of your head," she said. "I'm sure it'll come to you in the morning. Why don't you go on up to bed? I'll check on you every hour just like the doctor ordered. I have some work to do that'll keep me up most of the night anyway."

  "That sounds like a good idea." I slid off the stool. "It's not more Sherlock Holmes work, is it?"

  "Don't knock Mr. Holmes," she said. "He's helping us find a killer."

  I touched my head with a grimace. "Well, I wish he'd hurry it up."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  By seven the next morning, Irene was already multitasking at the kitchen island, talking on her cell phone while sitting in front of her computer and simultaneously consulting a double layer of spreadsheets. I wasn't quite as chipper. In fact, I wasn't even sure what time it was. Irene had woken me throughout the night just to make sure she could, and because of that, I'd only been able to catnap intermittently for eight hours. On top of that, I wasn't a morning person to begin with. I plodded into the kitchen bleary-eyed and slouched onto a stool, yawning.

  Irene put down the phone. She looked as if she'd just come off of a vacation. No red eyes or bed hair for her, and she'd been up all night. I don't know how she did it. If I hadn't been so exhausted, I'd have been furious. I didn't have the energy for furious.

  "How are you feeling?" she asked.

  I yawned again. "Like I've been awake for a month."

  She seemed contrite. "Sorry. I guess I overdid it a little. I promised Watson I would keep an eye on you."

  I lifted an eyebrow.

  She shrugged. "Yeah, okay, he's growing on me. Anyway, it's a good thing I did. Guess who just left a voicemail checking on you." She grinned. "Either that man gets an early start, or he's awfully worried about you."

  "He gets an early start," I said. "Don't read too much into it. He's probably just concerned as any doctor would be about a patient."

  "All his patients are dead," she said. "I doubt he's concerned about how they slept."

  I looked at her.

  "Don't you want to know what he said?" she asked.

  Maybe I did, and maybe I didn't. I was still stinging from being foisted off on Irene when he could have looked after me himself just as easily. More easily, since he'd already been there. I was getting a little tired of rejection.

  Okay, maybe I wanted to know a little. "What'd he say?"

  She closed her laptop. "He said he'll let you know if he hears from Lestrade about the fingerprints they took last night. Sounds like he's finally taking you seriously as the detective that you are."

  I looked at her. "I'm not a detective."

  "That's what I thought too, at first," she said. "But then I started thinking about everything we've done—interviewing suspects and exploring the yoga studio and the tea shop. Well, until those two goons ran us off anyway."

  Exploring. Yeah, that'd be the word for it.

  "And I realized," she went on, "that's investigating. Sherlock Holmes couldn't have done it any better."

  "Sherlock Holmes couldn't have done it at all," I said. "He doesn't exist."

  She did a dismissive wave. "Whatever. You see my point. Dr. Watson has enough respect for you now to keep you in the loop."

  I thought about it. In a twisted sort of way, she was right. It wasn't that long ago that Dr. Watson was openly skeptical of us. Uncooperative, even. So after two break-ins, a chase through Chinatown, a ginned-up website, and a phony staged internet chat he now believed an outright lie.

  What a proud moment.

  She hopped off the stool. "You want something to eat? I can run out for some doughnuts or something before I leave."

  I shook my head. "No, thanks. You have to leave?"

  "I gave the Boyfriend Babysitter whiz kids some time to put a business plan together," she said. "Today's the big unveiling. You can come if you want."

  I shuddered. "No, thanks."

  "Are you sure?" she asked. "You might be surprised at the quality of sleep you can get at these meetings."

  I grinned. "I'll be fine. I've got some things to take care of. "

  * * *

  You can rationalize anything if you try hard enough. And by the time I got to the Victorian's front gate, I'd rationalized that the only way to get over my mounting fear of the place was to get back on the horse. So to speak. This was my house, and I refused to be run off. Besides, both break-ins had occurred after dark. It was eleven o'clock in the morning. The sun was bright. The park was alive with activity. The mailman was weaving in and out of properties up the street. No one seemed to be watching me when I slipped through the front door and into the dusky foyer.

  I stood there for a few minutes, soaking in the place, thinking. Wondering what could possibly be worth multiple break-ins and assault. Could I have been the purpose? The house was a firetrap of paper and junk. Not like Kate had been safeguarding a rare stamp collection or the crown jewels, as far as I'd been able to see. The place was what it was, now and probably for the last few decades. The only thing that had changed was that Kate had died and I had started asking questions. Thankfully, no one could have expected Dr. Watson to follow me home the first night or to show up unannounced last night. Under other circumstances, I would have been alone for the entire night.

  Under other circumstances, I could have been dead.

  Shivering, I finally moved from the foyer into the living room, determined to find some inkling of a clue to why someone would keep breaking in here. I had no plan or desire to be there after dark, but that still left most of the day. I settled in front of boxes of papers I'd packed up to be discarded. Maybe I'd been too quick to categorize something as worthless. Problem was, would I recognize it the second time around if I saw it? Whatever it was.

  As I started going through the boxes, I was struck again by how Kate had surrounded herself with things and couldn't help but wonder if that somehow compensated for her lack of companionship. She hadn't exactly gone out of her way to make friends. Just the opposite. She'd alienated a fair amount of people with her complaints. Had she been soured on human nature after her stint working with Valerie? Maybe that had been her subconscious method of pushing people away, punishing herself for her former life. Or maybe she just liked to complain.

  Either way, it spoke of a loneliness that made me incredibly sad.

  I'd just about hit the bottom of the third box without finding a thing when something caught my eye. A sheaf of papers stapled together, some of the writing in Chinese characters. Immediately thinking of Albert, I scanned the documents. Luckily, some of the writing was in English—enough for me to tell they were papers relating to importing goods. A bill of lading, an invoice, an insurance certificate. Though it wasn't Albert's name but Louis Chu's that appeared on the second piece of paper. I remember his business importing plastic tourist souvenirs. Sure enough, the invoice mentioned cases of decorative statues made of celluloid and resin.

  I paused, wondering why Kate had this. I could easily see it being a case of misdelivered mail…but why keep it? Why not walk it over to its rightful owner next door? I glanced at the date. The 13th. The week before Kate had died. The day before she'd written her letter about criminals in the park. Coincidence?