Author note: I didn't even think about Lester and his love for lingerie until a few of you wrote about it in your reviews! It made me laugh, so I wrote it into the story. Hope you enjoy it. Also I have realised that it's taken me about a year to do ten chapters so I can only apologise for how long this has taken! We're about halfway through the events of Book Thirteen now, so just half a book to go!

Lester looked like he was in heaven. We were packaging up the orders that had paid for gift wrapping, so we'd taken the lingerie out of the plastic wrapping it came in, and were wrapping it ourselves.

"You're lucky this was me on duty today, I'm the best man for this job," Lester declared.

"Is that so?" I asked him.

"Yeah. I'm the most experienced at handling lingerie. Hal would have been blushing so much handling these delicate underthings that he wouldn't have been able to work. Bobby wouldn't have appreciated them enough. And as for Ranger, I'm not sure he'd even know what a bra is," Lester told me, his eyes twinkling. I believed him about Hal but I was fairly sure that he was making things up about Ranger.

"I'm sure Ranger knows what a bra is," I told Lester.

"Well sure, he did grow up with a lots of sisters, we both did. And his younger years, oh boy. But lately? The man lives like a monk. But better fed. He needs to get out more," Lester told me.

I laughed. I wondered what Lester considered living as a monk to be. Only going out twice a week? I was sure that Ranger had women throwing themselves at him where ever he went.

Lester finished off his gift wrapping package and looked at it in satisfaction. "I think I have a talent in this line of work," he told me.

We finished the wrapping and packaging, and I decided to set up some marketing posts and emails. I'd been planning on having a sale but I wasn't sure if I had time to deal with the extra orders that would come. I really needed to find Dickie so my life could – well not get back to normal, but so Dickie could stop being the centre of it. I needed to find him so I could get him out of my life.

Plum Lingerie needed my attention. We had Plum Blossoms, Plum Vintage, Plum Stars, and I was about to announce Plum Junior, my range for the tween market. My niece Angie was fast approaching her teenage years and Val was sighing over the availability of comfortable and practical bras that met Angie's standards. The challenge was keeping it priced appropriately for girls, since they were still growing. I was also thinking of branching out into pyjamas.

Lester and I ordered in from Pino's, and I got out the paperwork that Ranger had given me a copy of last night. Lester read over it while we waited.

"So to summarise," he began. "Forty million dollars was moved out of a firm bank account into a bank account registered to Dickie, then moved to another unknown account. It was done online. The unknown account could be anywhere, although I suspect offshore. Probably the Cayman's. Has Dickie ever been there?" Lester asked me.

"Yes," I nodded. "He went last year. I couldn't go with him because I didn't have a passport. It was during the Junkman thing."

"I remember that," Lester told me. "So the structure of the law firm is that all four partners own an equal share in the firm and all its assets. They own the building downtown that the law office is in, an apartment building in a so-so neighbourhood and a warehouse on Stark Street. And a bank account that used to have 40 million dollars in it."

"Got it."

"As for the partners, none of them are successful enough to explain the money properly. Petiak owns a small house, Smullen and Gorvich rent. Smullen has a wife and children back in South America who he visits often. The other two are unmarried."

"Smullen has a wife and kids in South America, and a girlfriend in Trenton. He introduced me to his girlfriend at the work Christmas dinner last year."

"Maybe cheating spouses is a company value," Lester suggested.

"I think Gorvich used to be married, but got divorced recently. I don't know about Petiak. He always has a different girlfriend whenever we had a function on that I saw him at though."

"So according to these records of clients and fees, Dickie has normal clients and is pulling in around two hundred thousand a year," Lester said. "Good money, but not good enough for this explanation of assets. Smullen, Petiak and Gorvich are where the action is at. Their clients lists are – well, let's just say I'm pretty sure that the government sent me, Ranger, Bobby and Tank after half these guys at some point. There's South American drug lords, gun runners, mercenaries, and some locals. They're billing big money against these clients. Either their clients really like paying too much money for their legal advice, or there's something else going on."

"What do you think it could be?" I asked Lester.

"Drugs. Guns. Human trafficking. Money laundering. I'm not sure."

"So what are we looking at here? Dickie somehow discovered that the firm is earning money through shady means and empties the bank account? Dickie suddenly discovered he has access to the bank account? If the other three are in on this together, why did Dickie have access to the money? But either way, he takes the money and then Ziggy is involved how? He was the accountant but why was he killed when it was Dickie that took the money?"

"Ziggy was taken first, then Dickie. But why I don't know. And we can't be sure if Ziggy was killed before Dickie disappeared, or after. Maybe Ziggy discovered something, confronted the other three partners and Dickie overheard something," Lester said. "We don't have enough information yet. We'd gathered some when Ziggy went missing but only the basic details. We still don't know what linked the three other partners together before they opened up the law firm. They all lived in the same town but otherwise didn't have anything in common besides law degrees with dubious pedigrees. We can keep digging."

There was a knock on the door and I got up to collect our lunch order from the Pino's delivery driver. Two meatball subs, delicious. We ate in silence while I thought about what to do next.

"Is there anywhere that Dickie could be hiding?" Lester asked me.

"I don't think so. I didn't know about the apartment building before Ranger told me about it, but I don't think he'd be there since it belongs to the firm. Joyce doesn't seem to know where he is, but I don't know if there were other girlfriends. His parents seem worried. He doesn't have any male friends nearby. There are some from college," I said.

"Could you make a list of the college friends? We can check if he is hiding with them," Lester said. "What about your family? Would anyone hide Dickie?"

"My family can't keep a secret. No one in the Burg can. Also my Grandma, mother and Val would hunt Dickie down if they sensed him nearby."

"I think we should check out the apartment building and warehouse," Lester said. "We can do that later today. I think we should go through your house again and see if anything looks out of place now you've had a few days away from it."

I hadn't been home for a few days, and wanted to get more clothes anyway, so I agreed. We'd only driven one block from Plum Lingerie towards the house when Lester took an unexpected turn.

"Do you need directions?" I asked him.

"Nope just checking something," he said.

"Checking what?"

"We're being followed," he told me calmly.

"We're what?" I asked, and turned around in my seat, looking behind me. "Who is following us?"

"Red convertible, two back," Lester said. I squinted and tried to make out the license plate. The type of car looked familiar. Then it clicked.

"Oh for crying out loud. That isn't even subtle," I said.

"You know who that is?" Lester asked.

"That's Joyce, Dickie's mistress. The one who accused me of killing him. She also spat in my milk in elementary school and cut off some of my hair. I hate her," I told him.

"She must have picked us up at your work, I didn't see her on our way there," Lester said.

"She's probably convinced that I have Dickie stashed away somewhere and I'm going to lead her to him," I said, rolling my eyes.

I sighed when we pulled up outside. I didn't want to buy this too big house in the first place, but Dickie did. I agreed to make him happy. And then the rat bastard cheated on me with Joyce, and who knows how many other women. I knew then that I wasn't going to live here again. My name was on the ownership papers, and I fully intended to take Dickie for my fair share of our assets, but as far as I was concerned this wasn't my house anymore.

I went into my bedroom. Nothing seemed out of place. I packed up a few more clothes. I couldn't stay with Ella too much longer, so I needed to look at getting an apartment of my own. One thing at a time, Stephanie, I reminded myself. Dickie's office was a mess and I had no way of telling if anything was missing.

"They said they were looking for a key. Any clues on what kind of key?" I asked Lester.

"Nope, they weren't very forthcoming with the information. But given what we know, I'd say it's the key to 40 million dollars," he said.

Great. With 40 million dollars at stake, I was probably lucky that the house was still standing. I was glad that I wasn't staying at the house. I was sure that whoever it was who was after the money would be back for another attempt.

"Is there any where that Dickie liked to put valuables? A safe? A hiding spot?" Lester asked.

"No. We don't have a safe. I can't think of a hiding spot. He kept our passports, birth certificates and marriage certificates in his filing cabinet. Does that count?"

"Is his passport still there?" Lester asked. I went into the mess of an office and looked around.

"Half the filing cabinet is on the floor at the moment, but my passport is there, see?" I picked it up to show to Lester. "And here's our birth certificates and marriage certificates. I can't see Dickie's passport though."

"You should find a safe place for these. Mind if I take them back to Rangeman for safe keeping?" Lester asked.

"Go for it," I told him.

I zipped up my bag and went downstairs. I grabbed my ghostbusters DVD and packed that too.

"Maybe I should just pack up the whole house," I said out loud.

"Thinking of moving?" Lester asked.

"Something like that."

We set the alarm, locked the house up and left. We headed towards the apartment building registered as belonging to the law firm, with Joyce trailing behind us.

"Should I lose her?" Lester asked.

"Nah. Let her waste her time," I told him.

"Are you sure she's not dangerous?"

"Well she'll sleep with anyone including Vinnie, so she might be harmful to your sexual health, but otherwise I think we'll be okay," I said. Lester looked thoughtful. Perhaps he was thinking of ways that Joyce could be harmful to his sexual health.

We pulled up outside the apartment building and looked. It was towards the edge of a not so safe area, where gentrification hadn't yet reached but would soon. It probably a good investment but looked a bit run down. It would take a lot of money to get it to a standard that Dickie would consider liveable but I guess none of the partners had to live there, so why would they care?

A familiar looking woman walked by. It was Smullen's girlfriend. I wound down my window and called to her.

"Rita!"

"Stephanie! Hey you. What are you doing here?"

"Looking for my cheating scumbag husband."

"I thought you killed him? I'm sure that I read that in the paper. He embezzled from the firm, and you killed him before anyone could find out where he put it."

If that was in the paper, it was amazing that my mother hadn't rang me yet with a why me. Maybe she was too busy drinking to be able to use a phone.

"No, I didn't kill him. But I don't know where he is either, or where the money is. I'm trying to find him so I can divorce his cheating ass."

"Ugh. Tell me about it. Peter didn't come home last night. I'm going to make him pay. I've had my eye on a Tiffany bracelet that he's going to need to buy."

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. "Peter didn't come home? Is that normal?"

"He has his own place, but he's usually at my apartment. He must have found some bimbo somewhere," Rita said. "It happens. He'll buy me something extravagant to make up for it, and I'll pretend it never happened."

"Do you live here?" I asked her.

"Yeah. Third floor. The firm owns the building, so I don't have to pay rent. It's a good deal."

"Have you seen Dickie? I thought maybe he was hiding out here."

"No. There's no empty apartments here, and I don't think anyone else at the firm is too happy with him, if you know what I mean."

I did know what she meant. The other members of the firm were likely behind Ziggy's death and Dickie's disappearance and possible death. But we were too polite to say it out loud. Instead I thanked her and said goodbye, and she told me good luck with my search.

Lester and I drove back to Rangeman. We both had a feeling that Peter Smullen's absence from home was not a good sign. First Ziggy, then Dickie, now probably Peter. People associated with the firm were disappearing quickly.

"Let's check the recording from the bug that you planted on Smullen and see if anything helpful comes up," Lester suggested. We settled down in his office, and started listening.

The bug was in his pocket, so a bit muffled. It only went for five hours before going dead – there was a muffled exclamation, and then nothing more. Probably at the bottom of a laundry hamper or at the dry cleaner's by now, Lester explained that it was a risk you took when planting bugs on a person. Even in a jacket pocket, you never knew when they were going to spill things over themselves and dry clean their jacket. Although it was only five hours and we listened at 2x speed, that was still two and a half hours I was never going to get back from my life. We learned that Peter liked to talk on the phone a lot, his conversations with clients bordered on tax evasion rather than tax avoiding, and he met up with someone for dinner. The conversation was vague but it sounded like a women's voice. Rita, or maybe it wasn't Rita and it was whoever's place he stayed at last night instead of coming home. I sighed. It was worth a try.

Lester stood up and stretched, then excused himself.

"Sorry Beautiful, but I've got to go. I've got a date tonight and I don't want to let her down."

"That's fine, we're done here. I might go through the paperwork one more time to see if there's anything that we've missed, or that makes more sense reading it again."

"Why don't you go up to Ranger's apartment?" Lester suggested. "It's empty anyway, and more comfortable than my office." I hesitated – invade Ranger's space without him knowing again? But Lester made a good point. He had a large table for spreading paper everywhere and I'd be out of the way. When I was on Floor Five the Rangemen tended to hover. Ranger had left me with his keys so I guess he wouldn't find if I was using his apartment. I gathered up all the paperwork, then headed upstairs. I had a date with Ranger's big screen TV, my Ghostbusters DVD and some microwave popcorn.