“Not sure I’ll go to university. Not for a degree program anyway. Maybe just to take classes that sound interesting.”
It was a surprisingly impractical and whimsical plan for someone as clever as Sherlock, but I didn’t respond. There was a time when I’d had a clear plan for my life. I’d rattled it off so easily to Lock—my future academic career. Just then, however, none of it seemed real. I couldn’t believe I’d ever actually be at university, taking classes and following a degree path like everyone else. I couldn’t really see past the summer and into our final year at school. I couldn’t even predict what would happen tomorrow. All I could think to do was focus on my sworn promise to Freddie—survive this mess and be there to help. It suddenly felt like the most pathetic of goals, even more pathetic than Lock’s trolling university classes on his whims. At least he’d be doing what he wanted.
“This work,” he said. “I think I’ll keep doing this.”
“Why not become a proper police detective, then? Or a criminologist.”
He shook his head. “Too limiting. Besides, one Holmes working for the government is enough.” He paused and fought off a frown. “My mother says that a lot.”
I perhaps should have asked how his mother was doing, but I was sure he’d bring it up on his own if he wanted to talk about her.
“Well then, not-police-detective, show me how you discovered this address we’re traveling toward.”
As it turned out, Sherlock was only half certain that the address he’d discovered in my threatening letter was the UltraCare Clinic in West End. There were two letters that still had a piece of the label attached, one showing “Ult” and “17A” of the address label and the other showing “dish Sq.” Lock decided this could only be 17A Cavendish Square, the main-floor office in an old white-brick building of medical offices. It wasn’t until we reached the place that I realized we also had no idea what we were even looking for there. That didn’t seem to stem Lock’s excitement, however. His eyes were alight, as if he were about to climb to the top of the building and jump off it.
The interior of the office was a stark modern contrast to the outside. The front desk was clear acrylic with a slab of polished wood on top. It stood in front of the only bright purple accent wall in a sea of black-and-white scrolling wallpaper. But there was no one seated behind the desk, so I pulled Sherlock to sit with me on the purple chairs that lined every other wall in the entry area.
“Shouldn’t we wait by the desk?” he asked, glancing around to take in every detail of the place, I was sure.
“To ask what, exactly? Have any of their magazines gone missing and who do they think stole them?”
He picked up one of the magazines laid out on a side table between our chairs and the next grouping of seats. “I have a theory,” he said. He slid a finger under the address label on the front and popped it off into his hand.
“Are they all that easy?” I asked, picking up my own magazine. But this one’s label didn’t budge, and when I tried to force it, the page started to tear.
“No, but I believe the letters with the address label on the back came from this magazine.” He opened the front page, and I instantly recognized three of the letters along the bottom. “The labels for this magazine all come off that easily.”
“So your theory is that the person who sent the threat is willing to go through the time and effort to cut out letters to make the message, but is too lazy to remove the label that might point us to him or her?”
“Definitely a her.”
I shook my head.
“And no. My theory is that she left the label on purpose.”
“Why?” I challenged.
“That’s the question we’re here to answer.” Sherlock glanced around the room again. There were two older men sitting in the chairs closest to the front desk, and a woman with a sleeping toddler on her lap sitting in the chair farthest away. “What exactly did she want us to see here?”
The front door to the clinic opened just then, and a woman entered. I recognized her almost instantly as one of the regulars from the park. She was a graying blond-haired woman wearing at least seven bags, which had always made her appear to be a globular being from afar. She had four satchels that crisscrossed her body like she was the world’s most ambitious courier, and three others draped around her front and back. And, because evidently she had more to carry, she held a large plastic sack in each hand, so that she was forced to push into the room awkwardly and disentangle the sack handles from her wrist before she could write her name on the clinic sign-in sheet.
Just as she’d finished adjusting her bags so that she could squeeze into one of the chairs, the door from the clinic back rooms opened into reception. I immediately sank lower on the chair, so that Lock’s body could hide me a little.