We stopped by Charlotte's Boutique to see if Charlotte was finished with Lana for the day. I'd joked with Lenore about what we'd find when we arrived. My prediction was Charlotte was going to be very happy to see Lana's ass walk out the door after spending most of the day with her. Lenore agreed and said we might even find Lana perched on a stool in the corner naked after getting her butt spanked. We were both wrong.
"Hey, Bas! Lenore!" Charlotte greeted us happily. "Business has been great today." She pointed to several women milling around the store. Lana was engaged with two women on the other side of the store. "Can I keep Lana until closing? I can drop her off at your place." I told her of course and asked if she didn't need to get home to her boys.
"Nope. The boys are doing fine. They are studying for some exams they have over the next few days. It's mid-term time since spring break is next week. They called to let me know they set right to work studying without even a pause for a video game. And get this, Tony has a pot of purple hull peas cooking on the stove. He described how he seasoned them and all. I told him to be careful with the stove on. He said they are in the kitchen studying and not in their rooms so they can watch the pot," Charlotte explained, grinning widely.
"The boys wanted pork chops tonight. So I'll cook that when I get home. Bobby got one of the packs we got last weekend out of the freezer and put it into the fridge after dinner last night. He told me how 'Mr. Derek told him the proper way to thaw meat is to let it slowly thaw in the fridge'. And 'how the meat would stay cool throughout and fine for a day or so.' I'm telling you those boys have grown up more in the past week than in the past year. And it is all due to you, oh and Derek of course," she added after a pause. She gave me a hug. Lenore watched, grinning.
"We wondered if we'd find Lana in the corner with a sore butt," Lenore said. "But I'm happy to see she has been helpful."
"Yes, very. She asked if she could text a few people to come in and it seems to have worked." Charlotte said, dropping her voice so only we could hear. "But I am a little suspicious. I'll explain when I bring her home."
I took Lori and Kat into my office and asked them if they needed to study for any midterm exams or if they had time to join me with a little project. Lori grinned, "Nope. We already took exams for our two classes and our final projects and theses are on track. We are proctoring mid-terms though, so we still have to show up for those classes. Whatcha' need?"
As I began to explain how I'd had a long meeting with Laura Hebert today and what had happened to her, the girls' eyes grew wide. "That is a majorly disturbed bitch to do something like that to another human being. Well, a free person. That is how you might treat a slave. We were thinking you were going to find Lana made most of the story up to make herself look large and in charge," Lori said.
"Yeah, we honestly thought you'd find it was maybe a catfight and Lana got the girl expelled and then kept badgering the woman later. You know, messing up the woman's career or something. And that would still be a terrible thing to do," Kat admitted.
"Okay, Boss, you got something up your sleeve. What can we do to help? I assume that's why we are in here." Kat inquired. Lori grinned.
"We are going to identify the individuals who raped Laura Hebert, nee Dupont," I said. "It happened twenty years ago but I'm sure we can do it. I have some very good facial recognition software to use. The first step is for you to go through the rape scene almost frame by frame to collect pictures of each face, whether straight on or profile. That is the slow part. Then we will run that through the search portion of the program to compare it to known data bases to get names and current profiles." I almost laughed at my girl's excited expressions.
"I have rules. First, do not mention this project outside of this room, nor work on it anywhere else. This is totally our secret. Lenore knows of course, but nobody else. Second, when we start our comparisons, we do not access any secure or rather I should say, non-public data base which includes government or banking. Don't frown. I know that would make it easier and we could probably cover our tracks, but I am hoping this goes to court, so we will have to testify to each step and what data bases we accessed. If one is illegal, any evidence we find anywhere can get thrown out of court. It is called the fruit from the forbidden tree. Take careful notes of each step.
"Now to get started, I am gonna make your laptops terminals of my main computer and give you limited access. We will begin after dinner. Questions?"
"Yeah, while we are sorting faces what are you going to do? Same thing only faster?" Kat grinned.
"No, I am going to try to take a short cut to find the two women who helped Lana set the rape up and took the videos. There is a woman Lana had contact with while still in high school. You heard her talk about the woman with Charlotte on the security feed. I have a name and the high school she attended. If I can find her, she might unlock some doors."
The girls wanted to get started, but they were on kitchen duty and that took precedent. I got a beer and watched the activity. I stepped outside at one point to make a phone call. I needed legal advice and Lou Player was just the person to ask. I ended my call just as Charlotte showed up with Lana.
Lenore and I stepped outside to talk to Charlotte in private. "This may be nothing, and I may be a little unfair, but I find myself questioning every word that comes out of Lana's mouth and her every action," Charlotte began. "The woman was just too happy to be there today and too cooperative. I mean she was a model employee. I did not let her handle any money or run the register, but she sold clothes and then would bring them to me to check the customer out." Lenore agreed Lana's enthusiasm was unusual.
Charlotte continued, "It started first thing this morning. Lana asked me if I used the security system during the day. Before I could even reply she said she did not want to get her butt beat (her words) if a customer shoplifted and she did not catch the person, but I saw it later on the video. She did not want to be blamed for not paying close enough attention. She made it sound like a logical concern and a very slight degree of mistrust I would be fair.
"I told her the security system was too complex to just keep it on and I could never spend all night reviewing it if I did. I smiled and told her our little confrontation was a special occasion and she just grimaced and nodded. Like I said, I just had a feeling. She asked if she could make a few phone calls and then quickly covered that by saying only texts and you looked at all her activity anyway so it would not be secret. She even showed me the texts. They were almost funny if you took them with a grain of salt.
"But when a few of the women she'd texted showed up, I hit the fob to start the security system running. I have no idea if there is anything there but I wanted you to know. I hate to put this on you and I will look at it myself before going to bed tonight," Charlotte finished.
I asked if the boys were still going to be with their father the next evening and if she wanted to come for supper. "The bastard better spend some time with the boys. He'd already cancelled his trip with them for spring break. He was supposedly set to take them to Disney World in Florida, but then spent all the money on a new guitar and amplifier system. It pisses me off. The boys are getting fed up with him as well. They don't particularly want to go spend time with him tomorrow. Both boys even claimed they needed to study instead." Charlotte began to laugh. "They said Mr. Bas and Mr. Derek said they expected them to get good grades and they want to impress you. I told them a few hours with their father would not hurt their grades."
