On the other side of town, in the basement of a small house, a band rehearsed for their next and biggest concert yet. The members of the band were both excited and nervous, but not necessarily for the concert itself.

Marcus Hall, keyboardist for "Hard Knock Life", was finishing up the closing song, and the last notes reverberated against the walls. As the sound died out, he turned to his friends. "That sounded great, you guys. We're going to be amazing at the show Saturday," he told them as he sat down on the couch.

"Yeah, definitely," replied Cat Parks, the lead singer. She may have used words that sounded excited, but her voice betrayed her. She sounded broken, disturbed maybe, about something. The excitement for their concert, it just wasn't there.

"Something wrong, Cat?" Remy Moon, the drummer, inquired. "You sound stressed about something." Of course, the five of them all knew what was probably the cause of all this stress.

"Of course I'm stressed. I watched some people get murdered a few nights ago!" Cat exclaimed, running a hand through her jet black curls. "What am I supposed to do but freak out?"

"Stay calm, of course. It's part of our job, Cat." Patrick Sullivan, bass guitarist for the band, spoke up with his eyes boring holes into Cat's own. "You know this. You were there when we signed on with him. When we signed the contract, that was something you knew we would have to deal with."

"I didn't know that I was going to have to deal with one of us committing a villainous act of murder," Cat demanded. "This isn't how our rise to fame was supposed to go."

"Fame? What fame? We're a garage band that just managed to get our first gig at a local nightclub. We get such a small income out of that. We get so much more thanks to working for them. We actually can pay for the things we so desperately need." Patrick put his bass down in its stand and crossed his arms. "We need this money, and we did actually sign up for this. If you read the fine print, you'd know."

"Alright, stop it, all of you," Tavi Morrison demanded. As lead guitarist and the one who led the entire band, he always managed to get the fights to stop. "Patrick, you know that nobody reads the fine print on anything. It's like terms and conditions, nobody reads it, ever. So don't blame her for not reading it. Besides, I'm not the biggest fan of it either. I actually hate it. We didn't sign up for this, but I'm not sure how we're exactly going to get out of it now."

"Yeah, well we still signed up for it. I, for one, am going to keep doing what our employer asks us to do. So sit back, shut up, and let's get ready for the concert and whatever our employer tells us to do next." Patrick glared at each and every one of his other bandmates. "Tavi, let's take five and then come back with the second set, yeah?"

Tavi sighed and nodded. "Fine, let's do that. Grab a beer, check your texts, have a smoke, I don't know. Just be back in five and ready to start on 'Sleepless'," he told them, then watched as all the others filed out of the basement. Silently, he took a seat on the couch and ran a hand through his hair. An exasperated sigh escaped his lips as he pulled out his phone to check his email.

There was one new message from an unrecognized sender, but he knew who it was. The employer. He opened it up and sighed.

Report in tomorrow at three pm. New assignment for you.

Tavi sighed again. If only he could figure out a way to get out of this without being killed by the others. He didn't want to end up in the same boat as those four kids at the gas station that one of them had to kill. He still couldn't bring himself to think about the fact that it was really one of them that had to carry that out. It was still a blur on who really made the blow.

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Morning came on Saturday, one of Louisa's two days off from the firm. She sat comfortably in the apartment's kitchen, a cup of coffee clutched between her hands. She had put on some light music to listen to as she got ready and relaxed this morning, expecting nothing crazy.

Harper staggered out of her bedroom, still half asleep but walking nonetheless. She seemed very much like a zombie in the morning, and until she had her coffee, she wouldn't be any more awake. When she reached the kitchen table, she collapsed in a seat and was immediately gifted a cup of coffee by her older sister. As soon as Harper downed a sip, she seemed much more perky. "Morning," she greeted softly, brushing her knotted blonde hair out of her face. "I need a shower. I smell like a high school locker room. And not the girls' locker room, but the guys'."

Louisa laughed and leaned back in her seat. "Finish your coffee. Wake up a bit and then go take a shower. If you fall asleep again in the shower, I'm gonna have to be the one to get you out of there, because Nate won't go near you then."

"Which is nice, but still. I get it." Harper sighed and took another sip. "What's the plan for today?"

"Well, Nate and I are both off of work," Louisa commented. Nate had been given a solid two weeks paid vacation because of the trauma caused from the gas station situation. Louisa was just off. "I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do today, and Nate's always a mystery," she admitted. "Speak of the devil," she then commented just as Nate himself strolled out of his bedroom. "Morning, bro."

"Morning." Nate walked into the kitchen and grabbed some freezer waffles out of the freezer to start them up. "Can somebody open a window? I'm burning up in here," he asked.

Louisa nodded. "I'll take care of it," she replied and stood up, walking over to the window and propping it open. She peered out across the road and watched the outdoors for a moment. Kids were running around at the playground again, people were running errands along the sidewalk, and a bus had just pulled up at the bus stop across the street. Normal.

She turned around and went back to the table, taking her seat again. "So, you doing anything fun today, Nate?" She inquired.

"Nothing really. Probably just going to run some errands, take care of some things, maybe call Mom and Dad and let them know how we're doing," Nate explained, thinking about it as he spoke. The three of them hadn't talked to their parents since before the day of crazy events. How they would possibly explain any of this, the three of them had no idea.

Suddenly, the sound of rattling metal could be heard through the open window. The Winthrop triplets perked up and turned their heads to look at what could possibly be occurring. Before they could even speak up, there was a frantic knock at the door. Louisa got up and walked over, hearing more and more knocks as they rapped at the wood.

She peered through the peephole of the door and was surprised to see none other than Farah standing there, a shorter guy with scruff standing beside her. Louisa opened the door and started to speak. "Farah, what's going on?"

"Dirk is climbing up your fire escape," Farah told her. "Can we come in?"

"Dirk is what?" Louisa asked, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Why would he...wait that's a stupid question. Yeah, come on in," she replied, just as she heard a gasp from the kitchen. She spun around to see Dirk's head in the window, glancing around the apartment while Harper went to grab a steak knife.

"Dirk, what the hell?" Louisa asked, her eyes wide. "Why in the...Harper put that knife down, he's fine!" She motioned to her sister to stop, not wanting anyone to get cut in their apartment.

"There's a guy crawling through our apartment window, and you think this is fine?" Harper asked, still clutching the steak knife in her hands. "Who is this guy?"

Dirk pushed his way through the window and landed, somehow, on his feet without much injury. His brown hair was slightly messy thanks to the roll he had undertaken to get into the building, but for the most part, he looked just as he did the day Louisa met him, basically down to the outfit. After catching his breath and dusting himself off, he opened his mouth to speak.

Louisa cut him off, however, before a sound could even leave his lips. "That's Dirk Gently. He's a detective. He's working on the case to track down Stella's money, find Oliver, and solve the murder at the gas station," she explained. "And yes, he's fine. Please, for the love of all that is good in this world, put the knife away." She ran a hand through her hair, then shot a glance over to Farah and the other guy. "Thanks for getting up here to warn me, otherwise he might have been cut apart by my sister over there."

"No problem. Glad we made it in time," Farah replied, giving Louisa a quick nod in response. Then she looked at the other man, then back at the others. "This is Todd, by the way. He's a friend of mine and Dirk's." Harper and Nate had already met Farah thanks to an open house night at the firm.

"Nice to meet you, Todd," Louisa replied, then looked over at Dirk. "So, I have a few questions. First of all, why did you need to climb up the fire escape instead of, you know, coming up the stairs like Farah and Todd?"

"Well, I thought it'd be quicker to climb up the fire escape in case of there being, I don't know, a couch in the stairwell," Dirk replied with a shrug.

"A couch? In a stairwell? Why?" Nate inquired, speaking up for the first time since Dirk had showed up.

"You'd be surprised the kinds of other things I've run into. Anyway, I just thought it would be quicker. What was the second thing?" Dirk inquired, looking between Nate and Louisa curiously. "You two actually look related. But you're the third sibling, yeah?" he then asked, looking over at Harper. "You don't look much like them. Did you dye your hair or something? Or did you two? Or are you just very different looking triplets?"

Harper looked at Dirk with a slightly surprised expression, but shook it off before responding. "Yeah. I dyed it blonde because I thought it would fit in better with my work. Well, what I want my work to be at least," she admitted, taking her seat at the table with her coffee in hand instead of the knife.

"Anyway, the second thing. How did you guys figure out where we lived?" Louisa inquired.

"Stella has your address on file. I looked it up this time," Farah explained with a smile. "Plus, we saw you really quickly when you opened up your window, so we knew we were in the right place."

"So that's how you knew which window to climb up to..." Louisa murmured, glancing at Dirk because he was the "you" she referred to. "Either way, did you guys find anything?"

Dirk's eyes lit up. "Oh, right! I do have something!" He grinned and went over to the couch. "Come over here," he told everyone and took a seat, searching through his pockets for some various things. Louisa followed eagerly, as did Farah and Todd. Harper and Nate went over to the couch as well, a bit more reluctant, but just as curious as all the others.

When everyone was settled, Dirk pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket. "I found this when I was searching through the files at the office," he explained. "It was the first piece of paper I saw in one of the file drawers."

The paper showed records of giving. Stella had always been a meticulous record-keeper, and she always recorded her charitable giving or funding for projects, hoping to get a tax break or return from it. This record was from two months ago. It listed off various corporations and charities. Feed My Starving Children, UNICEF, Lyttleton Industries, Harvard Law School (where Stella attended graduate school), and various other groups.

"Okay, it's a list of places she donated to. She's interested in helping the world. What does that have to do with this?" Todd asked, looking at the piece of paper with an air of confusion in both his voice and his eyes.

"It's what the second piece of paper shows. I found this one just below that one," Dirk replied and pulled out a second piece of paper. It was just like the other one that he had showed. It was another record of donations, except this one was from one month ago. The list seemed to be the same length, with most of the donations being at the same amount as the month prior. Feed My Starving Children, UNICEF, Harvard Law...they were all there, as were almost all the others.

"Lyttleton Industries is missing," Nate commented, pointing out where it should have been on the newer sheet. "That's the only one I notice being gone."

"That's because it is the only one that's gone. So, what I want to know is why Stella stopped funding Lyttleton Industries within the last month. It has to be connected," Dirk explained, slipping the two sheets back into his pocket.

"Okay, so what's the plan, then?" Louisa asked, turning her gaze away from the papers to look between the others gathered there.

"Well, there's other pieces of the puzzle we haven't been looking at yet," Farah pointed out. "We've been doing a lot with the robbery. But, we haven't done much with the murder or disappearance. Maybe we could split up and do some investigating of our own in those things?" She looked between everyone else as well, searching for confirmation or dissent within the ranks.

"Works for me. Pair up, take a piece, report back when something new happens," Todd mused. "Who goes where?"

"Well, let's see. We probably should investigate the hotel, the last place Oliver was seen before his disappearance. That's one," Nate commented.

"Then there's the gas station. Nate could probably get access to evidence there that we could check out," Harper added, to which Nate nodded with a bit of hesitation.

"And I do have an idea on how to further the bank robbery investigation, but it involves a little bit more work and time investment," Louisa finished. "I just need at least one person who is willing to get a new job."

Harper sighed. "Alright, so that's basically going to mean me. Uh, Todd, do you have a job? If not, we could partner up," she suggested, looking at the guy she was least familiar with. Leave it to Harper to reach out to everyone.

"No, I don't, so yeah I can go with you," Todd replied. "What exactly would we need to do? Just get the job at the bank and see what we can find out there?"

Louisa nodded. "Yeah. If you can get into the vault that was robbed and see what might have been missed by the police, you'll be golden. But at least try and get the job to hear about anything from the others."

Dirk nodded. "Nate has to go to the gas station, so Farah, do you think you could join him? That would leave Louisa and I to investigate the hotel," he stated.

"Yeah, sounds good to me. Let's get moving," Farah answered, pulling out her phone. "If you don't have everybody else's number, probably a good idea so we're all set in case of new information."

Everyone murmured comments of agreement, and the quick exchange of numbers occurred. Then, once everybody had taken care of that, Dirk smiled at everyone. "Alright, let's go investigate."