"Ge ge?"
"Yes?" Komui asked.
"Were you in last night?"
"No," he said. "Why?"
"Someone's been in this cabinet," Lenalee said as she rifled through the files.
"Rouvellier knocked it around a little," Komui said. Knocked it around a lot, really, but he'd been in an exceptionally foul mood. Everything Komui kept there that was breakable had been broken.
"No, that's not it," Lenalee said. "Someone's been in here."
"How can you tell?" he asked, peering over her shoulder.
"These ones in the back were knocked partly off their track," she said, "like someone was shoving them around."
"Are you sure that wasn't Rouvellier?" Komui asked.
"I don't think so," she said. "I mean, I didn't get a chance to check yesterday, but I don't think so. Hang on." She opened other drawers, looking through the contents, and when she went to kneel to check the bottommost one, Komui put his hand on her shoulder.
"Let me do that, mei mei," he said as he got down on one knee. Sure enough, in the back there were two files that were half off their tracks, as if they'd been pushed aside in a hurry. He did the same thing himself, pushing all of them backward, but all there was to see was the floor of the cabinet. Then he looked at the files. The lower cabinet was an archive of older paperwork, nothing interesting, but everything sensitive was kept with Hevlaska. "What on earth?" he said, mostly to himself.
"It's like someone was looking for something," Lenalee said.
"But what?" Komui asked.
"I don't know," Lenalee said. "There's nothing in here."
"Take a second look," Komui said as he rose. "I'm going to check my desk."
Sure enough, there were signs that his desk had been tampered with. Although most people thought Komui's mess was simple chaos, Komui knew where everything was, and knew which bits and pieces hadn't been put back in their places.
"I don't see anything missing," Lenalee said, "but there's so much here and none of it's important."
Komui opened the top center drawer of his desk, and he understood. "They were looking for hidden panels," he said.
"Why?" Lenalee asked. "Who would bother?"
"I don't know," Komui said. "I don't keep anything in my office, and everyone knows it."
"Well, if anything's missing here, I can't tell."
"Maybe some idiot off the street thought we might have money." Some idiot who knew nothing about dance studios.
"Was the lock tampered with?" Lenalee asked.
"I'll look," Komui said.
The lock on the studio door showed no signs of tampering, but it was a simple lock, the sort of thing that might be pickable with a hairpin.
He heard Lenalee's crutches on the floor and looked up.
"Anything?" she asked.
"I don't know."
"Do we call the police?" she asked, her voice filled with doubt.
"I don't think so," Komui said, rising. "There's nothing missing, so it would probably be wasting their time." There was also the unpleasant fact that not all of the Order's dancers would hold up to close scrutiny.
She smiled. "You should ask Jerry if he's had any problems."
He gave her a mock glare. "Are you dropping hints here?"
"You keep stalling."
He grinned and hugged her. "Are you sure you're ready for this?"
"I'm sure. I'm kind of relieved. I mean, I guess now we know it was going to happen anyway."
Komui sighed. "I should have known from the start." At the very least, he should have recognized that it was all too good to be true, even after it started to go bad.
"I don't know how you could have," she said. "Nobody could have seen that coming."
"I guess I just don't want to abandoned the others until I absolutely have to," Komui said.
"You won't," Lenalee said. "Who's going to tell? Me? Jerry? And anyway, Rouvellier's so busy with Allen and Cross that he probably won't care if someone does tell him."
Komui smiled. "Good point. All right, I'll do it."
"You have until the end of the week, or I'll do it for you."
Komui laughed. "Dear God no! I can't think of anything worse! All right, by Friday, and if you notice anything missing in those files, let me know."
"I will," she said.