None the Worse ✓

24) 'Discovering Your Boyfriend Is Indeed A Criminal' And Other Situations...

24) 'Discovering Your Boyfriend Is Indeed A Criminal' And Other Situations That Would Be Less Out-Of-Place In A Murder Mystery

Now that the time to party was over, life would return to its usual routine. For Benjamin, this meant going back to playing detective. After all, there was still the question of who Thijmen really was and why he was here. He hadn't gotten very far. When he thought about it, it was quite sad.

But he was done failing.

That afternoon, while his parents were out and while Thijmen was ransacking the kitchen, Benjamin tied the black sock to his head and rolled all the way to his parents' room. It was locked, of course, but he wasn't a direct descendant of the Emsworth dynasty for nothing; Benjamin rolled back to the living room, where Thijmen happened to be heading, too, presumably to watch TV and turn the air conditioner up to the max like it wasn't November.

"Bennie, can you go play out in the yard? You'll break something."

Benjamin stopped rolling. He tried, and failed, to think of a comeback in time, so he said, "I'll kick you back to Spinkylinky," before looking under the rug, taking out a key and heading back (walking, this time) to his parents' room.

If the file he'd been looking for was anywhere in the house, it had to be there. Mostly because Ben had already looked everywhere else, but he liked to think he'd come to that conclusion before he'd wasted a whole weekend on rummaging the study and other potential hiding places.

For a moment, it seemed like the key under the rug was not the right key to this room, since it got stuck. Because of the fact that he was home alone, apart from Thijmen, Benjamin felt like this was the perfect moment to swear like a proper adult.

He wiggled the key around in irritation as he muttered, "Shit."

It felt great.

It felt even better when the key actually shot farther into the lock. It was like he'd picked a lock on Master level without using a potion. Not that had happened very often.

Once the door was open and Benjamin was standing inside of the room, there wasn't much to see. Nothing interesting anyway. Just a bed and a closet and a mirror and a—

Whoa.

A desk. With drawers and everything. Jackpot.

With intense joy, Ben found it unlocked. It almost looked too easy. Not that he was complaining.

But he'd spoken too soon. There were about a hundred files in that desk...

What were they even about? And which one was Thijmen's?

With the deepest sigh Ben had ever sighed, he sat down in his father's desk and started sifting through them. The more files he passed, the more he was convinced his father was running a sex business. What kind of work did he do anyway?

Half an hour later, he came to the very bottom of the pile, where finally, he found The File. In hastily written letters (with a little scribble at the beginning, because his name was not only hard to pronounce, but also to spell) it said "Thijmen de Bruin".

He felt stupid for not checking the bottom earlier.

But was this really it? Was it just a file with "Thijmen de Bruin" on it?

Greedy as a pig, Ben flipped the cover page and started reading.

Personal information

Name: Bruin, de