Rolling her eyes, Roxy shook her head. “No, smartass, his name isn’t actually Mr. Moneybags. If that was his name it would be way too on the nose. His name is Ian Reinhardt.” Like the Tumblety family, Mr. Reinhardt had way too much money on hand and never seemed to use it for good reasons. He could easily fund some useful, life-changing services in town, but no. He chose to blow his money and yachts and to come up with elaborate ways to hide his indiscretions.
She had better things to do than dwell on that, like breaking into Ian Reinhardt’s office, apparently. “If you want to be Kimchi, go ahead and be Kimchi. I’ll be… Bourbon? I don’t know, I usually do this alone so I’ve never used codenames before.” Technically, codenames were not super important for the situation. It wasn’t as though they were going to be dealing with a lot of people in their search, and if they did run into anyone they would probably know their names anyway. Harris was a small town, so anonymity was not a luxury that they had. That was a danger of working on a case so close to home, but also part of the thrill.
As they drew closer to the office, Roxy started to explain things to Atlas. He was new, after all, and she didn’t want them to bungle their first date-slash-sleuthing session. “A little diary of evil plans and villainy would be nice, but not likely. They never leave information out in the open, you have to learn to read between the lines.” Stopping by the back door, Roxy peered around to make sure that nobody was looking. She checked the door and was unsurprised to find that it was locked. No problem. No problem at all. Holding her hand out, she wiggled her fingers. “Lockpick, please. Keep a look out for me, okay?”
Once she had the lockpicks in hand, she started to work on unlocking the door. Unlike in the movies, it did not only take a few seconds. Not with this kind of lock. “Once we’re inside, we want to look for anything that looks out of place or that looks like it was hastily covered up. A man as meticulous as Ian Reinhardt would not leave anything to chance, so if he had something to do with what happened to Mr. Tumblety, he would definitely have had a record of it somewhere, just disguised as something else.”
“Ohhhh,” Atlas nodded along as Roxy explained, “Not actually Mr. Moneybags, got it. Well, Ian still sounds like a sus name. Imagine having a name with only 3 letters in it, I could never.” He couldn’t quite put a face to the name, despite it being somewhat familiar. Honestly, they’d probably met at some function his parents dragged him to but Atlas could hardly be bothered to pay attention at those. His only real purpose was to look pretty and schmooze the investors of Harris anyway. Naturally, Atlas took to it like a duck to water. “Bourbon suits you,” he smiled, chuckling quietly at her acceptance of codenames, “Next time we should absolutely get walkies and pretend like we’re pulling off a bank heist.” He was kidding. Mostly.
Read between the lines? “Uhh and... how do you do that? It took me longer than the other kids to learn how to read as is,” he admitted sheepishly. He knew there weren’t actual words between the lines but the expression still managed to confuse him greatly. When asked for the lockpick, Atlas wordlessly thrusted the entire pile in his hands forward, letting Roxy choose what she needed. Ah, so that’s what a lockpick looks like. Noted. “Now that is something I can definitely do,” he nodded, unceremoniously shoving the rest of the items into his pockets and surveying the street. As expected of a small town, the place was seemingly deserted.
“Ooookie dokie~,” Atlas sing-songed after Roxy explained what they were looking for. Did he have any idea what to actually look for? Nope. Not a single clue in that empty head of his. A sudden crashing sound in the alley startled him, causing him to jump up slightly, “Oh shit, oh shit, we’re screwed, it’s the police, they’re going to ARREST US. My parents are SO going to-” he started, his thoughts only cut short by the appearance of a small tabby cat exiting the same alley where the sound came from, “Oh.”. Letting out a sigh of relief, Atlas smiled sheepishly at Roxy, “Uh... sorry about that. Anyways, continue what you were doing.”
Once Roxy had successfully unlocked the door, Atlas followed her inside. He didn’t know why he was expecting some evil lair or something, but it was clearly just a typical building, like the one his parents’ often ran their businesses out of. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing screaming ‘super villain mastermind at work.’ “So, sleuthing mastermind bourbon, where do we start?” He asked, looking at Roxy and tilting his head in curiosity. Despite practically growing up in a similar building, “What exactly would be out of the ordinary for an office building anyway?”