Page 44 of Rules of Engagement

"Are you okay?" asked Maddox.

"I don't know how many times people have asked me that."

"I meant, about the pre-nup thing."

"I was surprised but I'm not upset by it. Like he said, Solomon has a lot and I have much less. It's perfectly sensible to protect his assets." Plus, he indicated he was giving me everything in his letter. It was a lot to take in.

"What was in the package?" Maddox asked once we hit the first floor.

"I didn't tell you? A check for a million dollars and a letter telling me that he wanted me looked after if anything happened to him. I thought Mr. Gort might know what Solomon was actually worried about."

"I can think of a bunch of things that would worry him about you; but they don’t involve his own life," said Maddox. "A million dollars?" he added.

"Hold that thought," I said as my phone rang. "Hi, Fletcher," I said. "Do you have any news?"

"I do. I'm sitting with Flaherty and you're on speaker phone," he said. "We found the motorcycle but I’m afraid it's not good news. We found it near the old, unused train tracks, way out past Frederickstown. Unfortunately, someone burned it up."

"Deliberately?"

"Yeah, there's an empty can of gasoline a few yards from the bike. Someone definitely torched it. We think they must’ve had another ride waiting here, and drove the bike there to torch it before they hightailed it outta there."

"I suppose it's too much to hope that there were any cameras around?"

"Not so far, none that we are aware of," said Flaherty, "but there's a junk yard located around the corner. I think I saw a camera there aimed at the road. It's the only route out of the area, so if the camera was actually working, we might be able to see which vehicle left the area after the motorcycle arrived. After we're done here, we'll check that out."

"We're on our way," I said when Maddox nodded. "Fifteen minutes," I added as Maddox flashed his fist three times.

We jogged to the car but instead of continuing past the law office, Maddox took the next left and circled back around, aiming for Frederickstown. He preferred not to drive through the neighborhood – which was a badly thought out addendum to Montgomery. It was designed for commuters but unfortunately lacked any working public transport links to actually get the commuters anywhere. Maddox went around it, putting his foot down to accelerate.

"That must be the junk yard," I said, pointing to a building surrounded by rusty fencing topped with spikes. Cars were stacked high in piles, some partially crushed or burned out. A pair of blocky Rottweilers stood guard at the gates.

"It's run by the Pounder brothers," said Maddox. "A decent duo, but not too smart." We rounded the corner and found ourselves at the end of the road. I pointed to Fletcher's SUV. Maddox pulled in alongside it and we got out. We walked towards the two PIs. Fletcher waved to us and walked over to meet us, but Flaherty remained crouched on the ground, looking in the scrub brush behind a charred and twisted wreck.

"That's all that's left of the motorcycle?" I asked, wondering how they could have possibly identified the twisted chunk of metal as ever being a vehicle.

"They did a good job on it," said Fletcher. "Lucas managed to track the motorcycle's movements through Frederickstown but we lost them because the traffic cams were not operating. Someone has been taking them out on a regular basis and the city decided not to fix them anymore."

"It happened that many times?" Maddox asked.

"Seven times, to be exact. The last time they sent a maintenance guy out, some jerk duct-taped him to the top of the post! Emergency services had to be called in to cut him out and bring him down off the post. No one wants to fix the cameras now. Anyway, Lucas couldn't find any evidence of the motorcycle leaving the area so we took a drive around and that’s when we found this. The plates are still intact so we could identify it. I figured since it was stolen, no one much cared about removing the plates."

"Got something," called Flaherty before he walked over to us, carrying a small piece of leather draped over a pen.

Maddox pulled a pair of gloves from his jacket pocket and slipped them on. He picked it up, turning it over. "It's a wallet. Driver's license registered to Mikey Gibbs plus a debit card and twenty bucks. Where did you find it?"

"Over there in the brush, a couple of feet from the gasoline can."

"Do you hear that?" I asked as the sounds of sirens were getting louder. We all paused, waiting for a squad car, which turned the corner before it came barreling towards us.

"Get rid of the wallet quick!" ordered Maddox. "We don't want to be accused of evidence tampering."

"Take a photo of the driver's license first," I suggested. Maddox and I turned toward the police cars, stepping close together to cover Fletcher and Flaherty.

"No prizes for guessing why you're out here," yelled Garrett, getting out of the first car. "Is that the bike?"

"Looks that way," I told him. "Fletcher and Flaherty stumbled upon it. They called me and we were just about to phone it in."

Garrett harrumphed. "We got a tip an hour ago that a motorcycle was being burned out here."

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