So Sweet a Changeling: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 6)

Chapter Twenty-Six: Rachel, Thursday

Al nodded dumbly, and Lauren nodded and said, "Be right back."

She closed the door, and as she walked to the main entry door, Rachel turned to Al and said, "It's not her. It can't be."

"I know," he said, but he didn't sound convinced.

"It's impossible. She's most likely dead if she hasn't turned up by now."

Al shrugged. "She was alive in 1979, at least."

"Actually, we can't say that for sure, because we can't prove Sadie made those chalk drawings."

"Okay, yeah, fine, but the conversation I had with her freaked me out; it made me rethink this whole thing."

"Why, what did she say?"

"Let's wait until Lauren gets back, that way I can tell both of you."

She waited in resentful silence, but Al seemed to barely notice. He still looked spooked.

When Lauren returned, she said, "I let the Security Manager know to keep an eye out and check the video feeds at the entrances to see if they can find the woman matching the description in this story." She indicated the paper Al had printed. "They also called Sadie McGee, but she says she has her badge."

"That's weird," Al said. "How did this woman's badge work? Is it a duplicate? Should there be duplicates?"

"There shouldn't. Maybe Sadie got a replacement badge, but the original one should have been destroyed so this kind of thing doesn't happen."

She buckled in and pulled away, and Al asked, "If they catch this woman, what will happen to her?"

"Most likely she'll be arrested. Trespassing is a crime."

"Okay, go ahead and tell us what she told you that freaked you out," Rachel said.

"What did she say?" Lauren asked, brow furrowing.

Al said, "She saw the story I'd printed and said, 'Oh good, you found it.' Then she said she was wondering how long it would take us to find it, like she'd been expecting it all along. I actually asked her if she was the woman in the photo, and she winked and said something like, 'Now the game can begin.'"

They considered his words in silence for a while, then Rachel snorted and said, "She's fucking with you."

"Why, though?" he asked in desperation. "She doesn't know me from Adam. Why would she feel the need to talk to me at all, let alone play games?"

"Maybe she's keeping you on your toes, seeing if you'll do something else inappropriate that she can bring to HR," Rachel said, again glaring at Lauren.

"But she doesn't even work there!" Lauren protested. "Why should she give a shit? No, I think she's there for some other purpose, maybe to rob the place, steal equipment, or something like that."

"If she was there for the purpose of theft," Al said, "why would she talk to anybody at all? People would remember her."

"I have a better idea," Rachel said. "She's a former employee, and that's why she knows her way around the place, but she's disgruntled and is going to do something bad, and that's why she took someone else's badge. Maybe everything she's doing is part of this game, as she called it." 

"Then it's even more urgent that we find this woman and arrest her," Lauren said. 

"What I can't shake," Al said, "is the feeling that she knows something; maybe not that she knows me personally, but that she has a deeper understanding of events, like they've all happened before and she knows how they turned out. For example, when she first caught me going into the bathroom on Monday..."