I do not own Miraculous Ladybug.
"Natalie, I need you to schedule a meeting with our representatives in Sweden."
Natalie sighed as she shuffled through the dozens of files strewn on the floor from ten years ago. She was cleaning out all the old papers to make room for next year.
"I'll do that as soon as I'm done refreshing my office," Natalie promised. She crossed off a few items on her check register and tossed some crumbling receipts into the trash. As Gabriel Agreste's heels clicked away, Natalie opened the last filing cabinet, which held financial statements from the bank. She uncapped three different colored highlighters and went to work, only to feel a pang in her chest as she glimpsed the details of certain payments.
$100 worth of Camembert Cheese. $20 withdrawal under the label of 'Nino's Birthday'. 5$ Ladybug Socks.
Though it had been almost ten years, Natalie still felt pained every time she imagined the boy's sunshine hair and sweet smile. It was still hard for her to imagine that he could have been hiding enough sorrow to kill himself underneath his polite, optimistic front.
She balanced the books, noting with a smile the copious requests for Camembert cheese, and remembering how young Adrien had fantasized over Ladybug. There were numbers from Gabriel's accounts mixed in, of course, along with company expenses. Orders for materials and buttons and thread; the whole lot.
Her eyes drifted down. Gabriel's old new phone, check. New and updated Ladybug Action Figures, check. She picked up the next statement and stopped. 40,000 euro withdrawal? When?
She checked Gabriel's statement. There was no mention of forty-thousand euros up and disappearing. She studied the card number beside the transaction and recognized the last four numbers on the card. Adrien. Adrien's card.
Why would Adrien withdraw forty-thousand euros?
What puzzled her more was the lack of a label. Had Adrien forgotten his card somewhere and someone picked it up? Why hadn't this been discovered?
She stood up and turned on her computer to look at the digitalized records for the month after Adrien's desk. All funds and bonds that had existed for the boy in event of something happening had been dissolved back into Gabriel's account upon Adrien's death, but according to her statements, Adrien had only had 300 euros in his separate accounts and in his wallet, which had been left in his workbag.
Natalie pressed her finger on the intercom button on her desk. A red light came on. A few seconds later, Gabriel's voice crackled through the speaker.
"Yes, Natalie?" He asked.
"Sir, were you aware that Adrien withdrew 40,000 euros-" Natalie paused to check the date, "-two weeks before he died?"
There was silence on the other end, and then a rustle of papers. "Forty-thousand euros?" Gabriel asked. He sounded shocked.
"Yes," Natalie confirmed.
"No. No, I was not aware. Where is the money now?"
"Missing. Only three hundred were returned to you." Natalie stated.
"File a claim and notify the police. A sum that large shouldn't be that hard to track down."
"Yes sir," Natalie replied. She took her finger off the intercom button and drummed her fingers on the desk. She glanced at her phone on her desk. Adrien had had friends… very good friends that he might have lent money too. After all, most of his friends had very extensive, expensive hobbies. The Fashion designer, the reporter, the DJ… he could have given it to them as a way of apologizing for not being around much longer. Natalie bit her lip, considering, and then reached for her phone.
Alya piled pens, her phone, and clothes on top of her notebook and lugged her small load down the hall into the bathroom. Nino appeared in the doorway as she started the tub.
"Going for a bath?" Nino asked.
"Yup," Alya confirmed with a frown. She sat down on the closed toilet lid. "Something about Marinette isn't sitting right with me. Someone must have gone rooting through her room because she didn't have those things on her."
"Is it possible she sold the purse?" Nino asked with a sigh, repeating his thesis from earlier. His tone betrayed his opinion: Alya was going off on a tangent again when she should be focusing on her work project.
"What about the photo of us?" Alya challenged.
"She could have moved it." Nino rolled his eyes. "Not everything has to be a mystery, Al."
"Where? And what about her diary?" Alya bit her cheek and tapped her knees. "I dunno Nino. It doesn't seem… likely."
"The diary is probably lost in her room." Nino sighed, sitting down on the floor. "Okay, I know I can't stop you, but... have you even opened the Ladybug file yet?"
Alya blinked. "Huh?" She asked.
Nino rolled his eyes. "Oh, you know, the super-important file that only one person in the department gets the opportunity to work on per year and that may or may not hold the secrets to where she and Chat went?"
Alya winced at his sarcasm. "Yeah, yeah, sorry, I just tuned out." She traced a finger on the wall. "No, I haven't opened it yet, it's just- my reporter senses are tingling. There's more to this story. I'm sure of it."
"You said that when Sabrina took a new job working for Nathaniel." Nino protested.
"Yeah, and there was! She was totally into him!" Alya defended herself though her ears turned a little red.
"They were dating, Alya." Nino annunciated very slowly.
"What about Marc?" Alya wrinkled her nose.
"They were taking a break while Marc was in Versailles." Nino sighed, leaning his head back in frustration.
"Yeah, but she left Chloe to work there!" Alya reminded him, waving her hands a little.
"Chloe fired her." Nino deadpanned.
"Exactly!" Alya exploded.
"They had a routine hiring/firing of each other every six months for almost three years." Nino reminded her.
Alya wilted. Nino sighed. "Just, don't go crazy on me." Alya nodded. Nino stood up and walked away.
"Hey, Nino?" Alya called. He paused and turned around. "I love you," Alya hummed.
Nino cracked a smile. "I love you too." Alya smiled and shut the door in between them. She upended an unholy amount of bubble bath into the tub as it continued filling.
Now… to think. She opened her notebook and selected a pen to tap as she thought. The sound of the water helped her focus. She found a blank page and wrote: "Problem:" At the top. Then she paused. What was the problem? Something was unsettling her. What was it?
Marinette's things were missing, but why did that alarm her so much?
Alya took a deep breath. Okay, Marinette's things are gone, so where did they go? Problem: Where are Marinette's missing things?
Okay, now she needed a Pathway to Solutions. Options. What options did she have? Nino was right, the purse or the ring could have been sold. She highly doubted the picture, or Marinette's diary would have been sold, but you never know. Or maybe Marinette had simply thrown them out. But that didn't sound right either. Marinette wouldn't toss out her grandmother's ring or her favorite picture of her best friend. Someone could have taken them. The ring was valuable, and the purse was pretty. But why would anyone take a teenage girl's diary or a cutout photo of two friends? And how would they have gotten up there? They'd have had to come through the trapdoor or evaded Sabine and Tom completely as they stalked up the stairs. But then why not take her computer or sewing machine? It could be they would have had to have snuck back down past the shop owners, but a trip like that didn't seem worth it for only a purse and a ring.
Or maybe… Marinette moved it herself. But even that had faults. That photo had been hanging since they were in Ecole. Why move it then? And that purse wasn't used half as much as Marinette's day-to-day purse. Alya had only ever seen her use it at Christmas or Easter. And Marinette's grandmother's ring was too big for her little fingers. She kept it on the display for a reason – she couldn't wear it. On top of all this, she knew for a fact Marinette hadn't stored her diary in any other place other than the Magic Box since she'd first made the thing and had the incident with Chloe and Sabrina.
Alya scribbled down all of her ideas and stared at them. They all seemed equally useless. Every single one had too many problems. She groaned and shut off the water to the tub. She buried her notebook under a towel for safekeeping and stripped down to climb in.
As she lay in the sea of bubbles, she tried to think up less flimsy options. Her cold toes tingled in the water. She washed her hair, shaved, and grew too restless to sit in the tub anymore. Finally, she toweled off and stood up. She turned on the fan in the bathroom and dragged her things back to the bedroom. Nino looked up at her from his tablet. He chuckled as she tossed her clothes and towel into the laundry hamper and began to angrily run a brush through her hair.
"Nothing?" He asked.
"Nothing!" She snapped back, angrily.
Nino rolled his eyes. "Bring your notebook over here and let's see what you have." Alya groaned and picked it up off the floor where it had landed. She sat down next to Nino and explained all of her thinking to him. Nino nodded as she reasoned with herself. When she was done, he asked: "Would she have these things with her at all?"
Alya thought hard. She imagined Marinette's missing poster. Then, she shook her head. "I don't think so. They would have reported Marinette having a bag on if she'd had one. And a ring, if she'd been wearing it. The diary is too big, and I don't know why she would have randomly taken the photo down."
Nino hmphed, but still scribbled it down as an option they'd tried. Alya drummed her fingers. "I need another lead." She muttered. I'm still missing something. Nothing can be solved from this angle."
A buzzing sound came from the floor. Alya scooted off the sheets and picked her phone up off the floor. An unknown number was calling. She denied the call. It would send the person to her voicemail. If they actually wanted to speak to her, the first thing they'd hear would be "Please call again, and I'll pick up this time."
She tucked the phone in her back pocket. It started to vibrate again. This time, Alya accepted the call.
"Alya Lahiffe speaking." She said.
"Ms. Ces-, I mean Mrs. Lahiffe, this is Natalie Sancour. I believe you may remember me? I'm Gabriel Agreste's personal assistant."
"Natalie Sancour. Yes, I remember. Why are you calling me?" Alya asked. In front of her, Nino scrunched up his eyebrows. Alya made a slashing motion at her throat. He knew Natalie a little better than he liked. She'd helped escort Nino out of Adrien's house several times.
"I'm calling to ask if you or your husband recall Adrien giving you any form of money or a particularly large or expensive gift before he died?" Natalie asked.
Alya raised an eyebrow at the odd request. "No, sorry ma'am. Nino?" She turned her direction towards Nino. "Do you remember Adrien giving you any money or a really big gift before he died?"
Nino looked very sad. He twiddled his thumbs as he thought. Finally, he shook his head no.
"Nino says he didn't get anything either. Why?" Alya asked.
"We recently discovered he took out a large sum of cash before his death, and we're trying to recover the lost money," Natalie explained, sounding a little annoyed and disheartened.
"How much?" Alya asked, picking up her pen and doodling a little scribble onto her notepad.
"Forty-thousand euros," Natalie admitted.
Alya must have gone white because Nino frowned in concern at her. "And that just, went missing?" She asked.
"He withdrew it two weeks before his death in cash with no memo or explanation. I only discovered it looking at old bank statements today." Natalie replied.
"Wow," Alya gasped.
Natalie hummed on the other end of the line. "I wonder if Ms. Dupain-Cheng would have received anything. As I understand it, they had an infatuation?"
Alya wrinkled up her nose. If only, if only. "No, ma'am. She liked Adrien, but he was oblivious in favor of Ladybug." She corrected.
"Pity. I can't imagine what the effect would have been if he'd had a girlfriend." Natalie mourned.
Alya felt all her frustrations egg up inside her. She couldn't imagine that either. On the other hand, Marinette had been kidnapped a few weeks after Adrien's death, so it might not have kept Adrien alive for very long, but the possibilities continued to annoy her.
"Well, I suppose I can't ask her at all," Natalie said. "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Lahiffe."
"Wait," Alya said suddenly. She furrowed her brow. "Is there any chance Adrien might have written it down somewhere? In a journal or in his phone?"
The line was silent. For a moment, Alya was sure Natalie had hung up. Then, she heard a door open and heels clicking on a tile floor. "He – did have a journal he wrote in occasionally. And his old phone is kept on his side table. The room hasn't been touched, you see."
Another door opened. Alya listened to Natalie mutter as she examined – Alya assumed – Adrien's room. After several long, quiet minutes of Alya picking at threads in their bedcovers, Natalie spoke up.
"That's odd… it's missing. I can't find his journal anywhere."
Alya almost dropped the phone. She took a few seconds to recover, and then asked: "Where did he keep it?"
"In the bookcase that held all his music disks. He usually never moved it."
Drawers were opened and shut. She heard Natalie humming in thought. "That's so strange… I can't find it."
Alya's mouth ran dry and she fumbled her phone up by her ear. "Natalie, I- would you mind if I dropped by tomorrow to zoom through his room? See, I've been working on another case where a missing diary is the only piece of evidence and I'm wondering…"
"You think they're linked?" Natalie deadpanned. She sounded about as half as skeptical as Nino, so still very, very skeptical.
"I don't know, but I'm going with my gut feeling," Alya replied, though she was wiping her hands on her legs and feeling rather nervous about the sudden random similarity.
"Interesting. What time would work best for you? It's a Saturday tomorrow." Natalie asked. Her heels were clicking on the floor again, so Alya assumed she was returning to her office.
"Can I come over early? Around nine?" Alya asked.
"I'll tell security to expect you. Goodnight Ms. Lahiffe." Natalie bid her.
The phone clicked.
Nino twiddled his thumbs. "So…" he began. "You think these two cases are linked?" He hadn't, of course, heard the full story, but he'd been listening to Alya as she spoke, and it wasn't hard to fill in the blanks.
"No, it doesn't seem likely. I mean, Adrien's dead. A body was recovered and everything. Marinette… unless it was a hit job against two young adults, they couldn't be linked." Alya said as she got up to turn off the lights. Nino flipped on the lamp.
"So… the reason you want to see his room?" Nino plugged in his tablet and put it on the nightstand.
"Honestly, I'm just wondering what information I can glean. And maybe the similar evidence will give me ideas for Marinette's case." Alya climbed into bed next to Nino. He shrugged and nodded, so she assumed he agreed with her level of thinking. The couple said goodnight, flipped off the lights, and fell asleep.