Julia held the phone to her ear but did not have long to wait before her call was answered.
"Hi, sweetie," Alfred said as he stared at the photo of his daughter that sat on his desk in the small room where he sat only a short distance from his employer.
"Hi, Daddy,"
"How did it go?"
"It went south," she replied with a sigh.
"What went wrong?" he asked as he looked at Bruce who had stopped reading and was looking back at him.
"What happened?" Bruce asked Alfred.
"Who is that?" Julia asked her father.
"Your boyfriend," Alfred answered, which drew a smile from Bruce and a protest from his daughter.
"He is not my boyfriend. I had a crush on him a hundred years ago when I was young."
"You're still young."
"What did she say?" Bruce asked.
"She dumped you," Alfred answered, which drew a second round of smiles and protests.
"Would you stop?" Julia almost yelled into her phone.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?" he asked.
"Nothing went wrong. Someone beat us to it."
"She says someone beat them to it," Alfred relayed to Bruce Wayne, "she stressed someone like she had a particular someone in mind."
"It wasn't me."
"Your former boyfriend says to look somewhere else for your culprit."
"For Christ's sake." she replied with another heavy sigh.
"Details." Bruce said.
Julia could hear his voice through the phone and did not wait for her father to relay the request.
"Beth had a source that gave up the location," Julia's voice echoed in the small room, as her father switched to the speaker before laying his phone down on his desk, "we were conducting surveillance this morning when we found the building covered in uniforms."
"Bodies?" Bruce asked.
"None. Not that we could see. No bodies, no fire; but the police took three vans worth of stuff out of the building."
"Someone hit them first, but didn't kill anyone, and didn't take anything," Bruce said.
"Seems like," Julia replied.
"Sounds familiar," Alfred said.
"Someone's been busy," Bruce said.
"Less work for us," Alfred said, "that's a good thing, isn't it?"
"Possibly."
"How is Beth?" Alfred asked his daughter.
"More good days than bad. But you know her, she never met a mystery that she did not have to solve. And this string of raids, and whoever is behind them, is a major mystery."
"Not just to her," Alfred replied, "she won't be the only one looking."
"Not with how much money is being lost," Bruce added.
"Can your friend talk to his source in the NYPD and see what they know?" she asked, knowing full well that Bruce would interpret the word friend correctly.
"What is that saying about gift horses?" Alfred said.
"He can ask, but it might draw attention, and that might not be a good thing," Bruce answered, "my friend will be at the top of any list of suspects for these raids, and him asking would cross himself off that list, which won't help whoever is really involved."
"It was just a thought."
"But we have other sources," Alfred said to his daughter as his eyes met Bruces.
"Just be careful," Bruce said, "don't go down this rabbit hole unless you are sure you are ready to see what lies at the bottom."
