Author's Note: I can't believe I am uploading this. Six years on. I don't know where the other two are, but I can't leave our tale unfinished. I was a little lame as a 17 year old. Lets see if I can gain a bit of sophistication with chapters 6 onwards.

As Jordan was clearly reluctant to continue reading the diary, Max suggested that a drink break was imminent. The group broke up and took advantage of their free time in various ways. Seely, still looking rather irritated but in a "slightly left out" kind of way, was rifling through newspaper clippings. Bug wandered off, presumably to the bathroom. Nigel entertained himself and Lily by requesting from Max various elaborate cocktails, all of which Max, ever ripe to a challenge, tried to concoct.

"This all seems too shallow to me," Garret said to Jordan. "We're missing something."

"We only have Lola's take on this at this point," Jordan agreed. "Most of what was really going on would have gone straight over her head. ME dad or no ME dad, she was a singer."

"Seems to have her head screwed on," Woody interjected from his position on the floor, leaving up against the stage.

Jordan shrugged dismissively. "Doesn't matter," she countered. "We're missing all of the lingo, the know-how. Which is why we're getting the Days of our Lives version of this tale rather than the facts." She caught her boss's eye. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking, B1?"

"Are the next parts of the journal happy?" Garret asked. Jordan shook her head, her eyes giving away what was contained next.

Jordan approached Woody. "How much are you in Donovan's head?"

Woody frowned. "I don't understand some of his motivation," he replied. "I get that he was totally alone, but it seemed so easy for him just to let her in."

"Again, we have only her take on the situation. And you heard the monologue about 'letting someone in', as tedious and cliché as it was."

Garret raised an eyebrow at Jordan's slightly condescending tone. "If you're going to keep a journal like that, at a time like that, I'm sure you're not going to be thinking about the sensibilities of the people reading it sixty years later trying to form some kind of plot out of it. She didn't care if she was being lame."

"Sometimes we are just lame," Woody agreed, quite lamely.

Jordan suddenly noticed that Max and Nigel were on the edge of their conversation, Nigel holding a tall glass with something that resembled algae in it. Jordan put her nose to the rim of the glass, before drawing back in mock disgust and staring at her father.

"Where on earth did you find that?" she asked incredulously. "Leading a double life as a mad scientist, apparently."

The group, who had filtered back to their positions, chuckled. Jordan looked around herself at the faces of her colleagues. She smiled airily.

"Enough about me," she said decisively. "It's time to hear this story from the mouth of the Detective."

"What?" Woody protested. "I don't know what happened next!"

"Yes, you do," Garret pointed out, on Jordan's wavelength. This show needed mixing up a bit. "You have all the case files, which you have already digested. All you need to do is inject a bit of imagination into it."

Jordan smiled at her boss, who could sometimes be a bit stuffy. The words 'use your imagination' were not easy words for Garret.

Woody was frowning, concentrating hard. Jordan rolled her eyes, exasperated.

"Why don't you start, Dr. Mitchell?" she said to Garret, who met her eyes.

"Mitchell doesn't have as much to say," he replied, then shrugged. "But if our resident doe-eyed detective isn't feeling up to it…"

"Take us back to 1927, Dr. Macy," Jordan said, and sat back in her chair.

It wasn't just a throwaway comment; what he had said to Donovan, despite his tone being as casual as it was. Mitchell really did not know where Lola had hidden herself for nine years, before re appearing in Boston as if nothing had happened. What was most perplexing for him was that she had re appeared at all. And that she seemed to have no remorse whatsoever for what happened to her father.

Mitchell was sitting at his desk, the moonlight drifting in through his open window and casting a sliver of pale light over the papers he was perusing. He swivelled in his chair and looked out. The light seemed to struggle between the particles of smog thick in the air. The city was quiet, but not deserted. Below, on the streets, the creatures of the night had emerged. The party goers. The dark figures in the alleyways and in the thresholds of bars, slinking about as if not realising that the restrictions of prohibition had been lifted. The prostitutes, plying their filthy trade to the underbelly of Boston.

His lip curled in disdain. The amount of murdered whores he had sliced open in order to create a report for the state as to why they had died. If only he could simply state stupidity and filth as a cause of death. He could not understand it, he would never understand it. What was so wrong with the world? He was under no illusion that it was a modern problem. There had been filth as long as there had been humanity. It did not mean that he had to like it.

Shaking his head as if to dismiss his useless musings, he turned back to his desk and nearly had a kitten upon seeing a figure standing at the door. The light was thus that the man was just a dark silhouette.

"Donovan," Mitchell said, as the figure came closer and further into the light.

The detective looked awful. He clearly had not slept in days.

"What on earth is the matter, man?" Mitchell demanded as Donovan put a hand to his head. Donovan's knuckles went white and he made a massaging motion on his forehead. Stress induced headache? Mitchell wondered, and his eyes narrowed. He didn't know what was going on in the younger man's mind, and he wasn't sure he wanted to.

"Violet," Donovan said. Mitchell cursed explosively. He got quite irritated when he was interrupted from introspection.

"We have been over this, damn it," Mitchell said. "My mind is made up, O'Daley's mind is made up, the DA's mind is made up and the public's mind is made up." The ME paused to allow his words to sink in. "It's just yours that is all over the place."

Donovan said nothing for a while, but his eyes burned as if there was a bonfire in each of them. Mitchell's frown deepened.

"Damn it, Mitchell, do you think I give a crap what the public thinks? I'm telling you, we have not looked enough into that girl."

Mitchell signed deeply and straightened up in his chair. His patience was being tested. He knew who had killed Bert Watson. And it was not dainty, well-to-do Violet Meridian.

"Talk to me," he invited Donovan, humouring him. He had always had a lot of respect for the detective, who was damned good at his job. Almost as good as Mitchell himself was at his.

"She had means, motive and opportunity," Donovan began, and Mitchell could not stop an exasperated roll of his eyed. Donovan pushed on. "She came from a rich background, but is estranged from her family. What we didn't know, is that she is NOT estranged from her mother."

Mitchell frowned.

"Meridian and her father had a falling out when her mother fell ill. She left, and her father never forgave her. They had had a rocky relationship anyway. Her mother died soon after, but not before securing her only daughter's future with a large sum of cash, given to her unbeknownst to her father. Meridian has been sitting on it ever since, playing the fallen princess."

"I am not seeing the link, here, Donovan."

"She left home, and where did she go? Straight to Stanley and her father. She had always been the third wheel in the friendship with Grant and the Watson boy, but with Lola out of the picture, Violet stepped in. Stanley was happy to help his friend, but Violet always knew what, and who, he really wanted."

"You're saying Meridian is in love with Stanley Watson?"

Donovan shook his head, frowning. "No… well, I don't think so. She's always played second fiddle to Lola. Violet had the better background, but Lola has the personality." Mitchell watched Donovan closely, but the detective was choosing his words and his delivery extremely carefully, it seemed. "Now she was literally playing second fiddle… well, in terms of their music, anyway. Lola has the voice, Violet has… well I'm not sure, really. She's a pretty enough thing to look at but…"

Donovan's mouth snapped closed and his eyes hardened. "She is insanely jealous."

Mitchell exhaled. "So," he began matter-of-factly. "You're saying that sheltered little second fiddle Violet Meridian murdered her boss in cold blood to get back at her best friend for being a better singer?"

Donovan sighed, and met Mitchell's eye. There was a sort of resignation in the young detective's voice when he continued.

"She's hiding something, Fred," Donovan said. The use of the MEs first name concerned Mitchell. Donovan was desperate for him to understand. But Mitchell did not. "She threw something into the Charles, and was caught red handed. Letters, she claimed."

"How do you know?"

"Carmichael."

"That idiot reporter?"

"Idiot, pain in the ass, whatever you want to call him. He's a weasel, that's for sure."

"Look, Donovan, this is really quite simple. Grant needs the money. God knows she has nothing as it is. Watson was about to throw her out of the bar, on the street. Grant couldn't let that happen, and Watson Jnr couldn't convince his father to keep her. Grant, having no love for her friend's father, realised that he had to be removed. Slipped some poison in his drink. Her work complete. Her job secure, no one had to know it was her."

Donovan stood up. He was ready to leave. Mitchell knew he wasn't convinced.

"That's just it, Mitchell. Why on earth wouldn't she guess that she would be a prime suspect? She is no fool."

"She is more of a fool than you think," Mitchell said in a knowing kind of fashion.

"She is no fool," Donovan repeated, his voice almost a growl in its intensity. He turned on his tail and left Mitchell to stare after him.

What on earth has gotten in to him, Mitchell wondered, incredulously. He shook his head, resolving a good night's sleep would do him no harm, and left the office.

"I thought this was supposed to be less like Days of our Lives," Nigel said. "All that did was complicate things, Mitchell, I mean, Garret." Nigel grinned at his joke.

Woody glanced at Garret.

"Mitchell is not going to budge, is he? Why is he so unwilling to examine any other possibilities?"

"He is too close to the project," Garret replied. "He was extremely close with Lola's father."

"Sounds like Dr. Grant took it a little bit too hard that his daughter left home, considering what an arsehole he was," Bug interjected.

"It's not that," Garret said, holding a clipping up. "Grant died. Really, really stupidly. Drunken barfight."

"Seriously?" Lily said. "That's a little bit cliché."

"Yeah," Jordan said. "Lola's entire life was a little cliché, it seems. But Mitchell blamed her in a way."

Garret nodded. "His friend was never the same after she left as well as her mother."

"But he was an arsehole," Bug reiterated.

"So what now?" Seely this time, whose voice had lost the edge of someone who was not enjoying themselves. Jordan grinned at him.

"Time for Ricky to figure out what he's going to do next." Jordan poked Woody hard in the shoulder, and he inclined his head.

"I'm ready," he said.