So Sweet a Changeling: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 6)

Chapter Sixteen: Lauren, Wednesday

"Lauren, you're in trouble," Rachel said as she and Al, and Johnny, to her surprise, walked up to her.

"What do you mean?" she asked defensively, even though she was sure Rachel had said it in jest; this day was hard enough for her without any more insinuations, spoken or otherwise, that she wasn't pulling her weight in the daughter-in-law devotion department. Lauren hadn't been fooled by the hug Mrs. DiTomaso gave her earlier; that had been for the other mourners to see, and Lauren's tears had been in sympathy for poor Joe's grief, not for his mother's. Not after she'd gotten an earful from her last night about not being there to pray the rosary at her house Saturday night.

"The photos of those chalk drawings are in your slideshow," Al explained. "They must have gotten in there by mistake."

"What?" she breathed. "No, that can't be, I saved and closed the slideshow file before I scanned in those photos."

Al shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you. They were on the wall. Johnny freaked out when he saw them."

Lauren whipped around on Johnny, and he shrank back from her glare. So, that was why he was with them.

"Not freaked out angry," Al explained. "Freaked out scared."

"I wasn't scared," Johnny protested petulantly. "It's just... can we take them out of the slideshow? Then I was going to tell you guys about them."

Lauren blinked in surprise. "What do you mean, tell us about them? Do you know something about them?"

"Let's take the pictures down first, and I'll explain."

Lauren shrugged and led them into the office, where the laptop was running the slideshow, connected to the projector in the living room over wifi. She opened the file and saw the photos in the queue for the slideshow and, it pained her to realize it, there were the chalk drawing photos, which she'd labelled Diamond1 through Diamond 4 to distinguish them from the ones for Joe's dad.

"Dammit," she said as she removed them from the queue. "I don't know how these got in here. I'm sorry."

"I'm going to get the rest of the LSDC in here," Rachel said. "Wait for me. Is this room private enough, do you think?"

Johnny nodded.

After Rachel left, Lauren said, "Maybe one of the kids got in here and fiddled around with the laptop? I really can't explain how those photos got into the slideshow. I scanned them to have a closer look at them, because when we found them in Al's album on Saturday night we were so curious about them."

"Mainly I was unnerved because I don't remember ever taking them," Al said. "But, Johnny, you said I did?"

Johnny nodded again but said nothing, and they all waited in awkward silence, a trio in formal wear, when normally they'd all be in jeans or shorts on a beautiful summer's day such as this one. Lauren always thought her formal clothing made her appear too feminine, too cute, and thus taken less seriously by both male and female colleagues, and she had to work harder to be taken seriously. Johnny, normally in grubbies on a construction site, actually looked good in a suit, even if the occasion was a sad one. 

And Al... well, his suit was bought off the rack and thus not tailored to him, so it didn't do his body justice, but she still felt the urge to pull off his tie, rip open his shirt, clear the desk of everything, including the laptop, lay him down on the desk and climb on top of him. Her body was still humming from their shower escapade on Monday, and his worry that they'd been spotted by another staff member (whose name was Sadie, coincidentally enough) hadn't bothered her, since nothing had happened to Al yesterday, no talks with HR or other communication from management. That didn't mean he couldn't get disciplined, but the more time that passed, the less likely it would happen.