Kowalski was obviously expecting some sort of a reaction from Julius. For his part, Julius stared at him for a moment before saying simply, "Oh." Then he scratched his head. "I guess I should meet her, then. Right?"

Kowalski stared at him in confusion before Julius's words sunk in. "Oh ... yeah. Right. She's at the Café Briggs down the street. You know where it is?"

Julius nodded wordlessly. "She's got stunning black hair," Kowalski said. "You can't miss her."

After nodding again, Julius tramped off. Oddly, his thoughts weren't on the murder. Instead, he was thinking about his lack of shoes and how much he wished that he had even just thought of socks. He supposed it was too late to think of that and reluctantly ignored the stinging pain in his toes.

The Café Briggs—a really weird name, in Julius's opinion, though less so when he considered it was a man named Mr. Briggs who owned it—was a tiny breakfast place that served undercooked pancakes, cold hot coffees, and boiling hot iced coffees. It was probably because Mr. Briggs was blind as a bat without his glasses and was constantly losing them. Unfortunately for Julius, he was often called by the man to find said lost glasses and return them. His reward usually consisted of coupons for the—erm—food that Mr. Briggs served.

As Julius went to pull open the glass door to enter Briggs's café, a voice hailed him from down the street. "Mr. Barnum! Mr. Barnum!"

Julius stopped with his hand on the metal handle of the door as the police officer ran up to him. The young man had a black leather pocketbook in his hand and was panting for all he was worth. "Sorry—sorry, Mr. Barnum," he apologized breathlessly.

"Sorry?" Julius repeated uncertainly, looking at the officer with a frown. "Sorry for what? I'm awake."

The man stared at him with a blank look. "Wait, what?" he said.

"I thought you were apologizing for waking me up," Julius said. "So I wanted you to know there was no reason to be apologizing."

The police officer shook his head in bemusement. "That wasn't—" he began, then took a deep breath to calm himself. "Mr. Barnum, sir, someone broke into your car. They were trying to steal this." He handed Julius the black pocketbook he'd discovered on his lawn. "I stopped them before they could."

Julius eyed the pocketbook warily. First it had ended up on his lawn out of nowhere, then some stranger had tried to steal it? He decided that, after his interview with Yuri, the victim's sister, he'd open it and see what was inside. Wordlessly, he took the bag from the officer and slipped it over his shoulder, having nowhere else to put it. The officer nodded at him, and it was only after he'd begun to walk away that Julius found his voice. "Thanks for getting it back for me," he told the man.

The police officer turned, grinned, and saluted. "Anytime you want, Mr. Barnum, sir!" he said. "I was glad to be of service." His face fell. "I'm afraid your car window, though ..."

Julius sighed. "Par for the course. I'll have to get the window fixed, won't I? Don't worry about it. I'll figure something out. Thanks, anyway." With a casual wave, he pulled open the door to Briggs's café and went inside.

There was nobody there. The brightly-lit café was totally empty; the 60's stools with their red cushions were unoccupied at the counter. None of the side booths had any customers in them, and even Mr. Briggs himself was not there. The normal smell of burnt coffee was absent, and the only indication that anyone had been in there all day was a napkin on the grey countertop. Julius walked over to the counter, dropping the pocketbook on it as he slumped into his seat. He considered the napkin carefully. There was only one sign on it that showed it had been used—a lipstick stain. Whoever the woman who had used it was, she had only light, glossy, pinkish-orange lipstick on. Perhaps it was the mysterious Yuri, hiring him to solve a murder that he was under suspicion for. It didn't make a lot of sense the more he thought about it.

Casually, Julius slid his finger under the flap of the pocketbook and opened it. He moved to reach his hand inside when the door opened, the bell on top jingling cheerfully. Julius spun his stool around to face the young woman standing there. She tossed her long, straight black locks over her shoulder, her pale face reddened by the spring chill outside. Her black trench coat was buttoned incorrectly, and her black eyes flicked up and down, studying Julius. The only things that comforted him about the rather intimidating girl was that they were about the same age and the same height. Julius went with a casual and noncommittal greeting. "Hi."

The girl still eyed him in a strange manner. "Hello."

Julius shoved the pocketbook even further behind him. Honestly, why had he kept the dratted thing? Now everyone was going to think he carried around a man bag. Forcing his thoughts away from his annoyance, he went for a more direct approach. "Are you Yuri?"

The young woman, Yuri, nodded. "Yuri Vel. Are you Julius Barnum?"

Julius, for his part, nodded. "Won't you sit down?" he invited her.

Reluctantly, Yuri made her way over to the counter and sat beside him. Her heavy black boots kicked his leg once as she tried to get comfortable. He couldn't help but notice how her eyes fell to the pocketbook and he saw something light up in them. Before he could fully figure that out, his gaze lit on Yuri's hand. Her knuckles were cut and bloody, and she caught him looking. "Something wrong, Mr. Barnum?" she asked.

At her question, he raised his eyes to her face. "Your hand, Miss Vel—" he began.

"What about it?" was the retort.

Julius indicated her right hand, only to see ... there was no more blood. "That's—that's impossible," he stammered out. Even he, normally exhausted and sleepy as he was, couldn't imagine a young woman's hand so badly savaged and cut, almost as if by ... glass.

What had that police officer said? "I'm afraid your car window, though ..." His car had been broken into. The window had to have been broke in the thief's effort to get to the bag. And Yuri's hand ... but now there were no marks! He knew he'd seen them, he couldn't have imagined them. But then ... where were they now?

"What's impossible?" Yuri questioned, and Julius thought he saw a flicker of amusement on her face.

Julius pushed the thoughts of the pocketbook and Yuri's hand to the back of his mind. There was no chance that they could possibly be connected. It had to just be coincidence. In the meantime, he had a murder to solve and himself to prove innocent. "Never mind," he said. "I have a few questions for you, about you and your sister. May I, if it's not too painful?"

Yuri shrugged. "If you must," she said.

That wasn't the response Julius had been expecting, but he continued on anyways. An uncooperative family member had not been something he'd thought he'd have to contend with, but he would deal with it nonetheless. "First off, what is your sister's name?"

"Abigail Vel."

Abigail and Yuri? Julius frowned. "Does your name mean something? I mean, it sounds Japanese ..."

The young woman snorted. "In Japanese, it means 'lily'."

"But are you Japanese? Your sister didn't look like it." Frankly, Julius didn't think Abigail resembled Yuri in any way. The two were as different as night and day.

"We are not Japanese. If you must know, we come from a tiny country. My name means 'warrior', my sister, 'lover'. Even then, she still took the responsibility ..." For a brief moment, Julius saw true pain on Yuri's face. It only lasted for a moment. "But I digress. Any other questions?"

"Yes," Julius said. "Loads more. Do you have any idea why Abigail was killed last night?"

Yuri slammed her palms on the counter, upsetting the napkin holder and making Julius jump in surprise. "If I knew why, do you think I would have bothered with you?" she shouted.

"Or did you only bother with me because of this?" Julius grabbed the pocketbook and shook it in her face. Normally, his temper wasn't that short, but Yuri's shouting had surprised and angered him, for some reason. "I've seen you eyeing this the whole time! You broke into my car, didn't you? You lured me away to get the pocketbook, but you didn't bet on the police officer guarding my car! That's the only reason you showed up here—to try and take it from me. Isn't it?"

"Just give it to me," Yuri insisted. "You don't know what you're dealing with. I don't want you getting caught in the crossfire."

"So you do know something!" Julius said triumphantly. For the first time in a long time, he felt wide awake. It was time to prove himself as a PI. "I'm supposed to be solving your sister's murder. So tell me something—did you plant my business card on Abigail's body?"

Yuri's head shot up and she stared at him. "Your business card?" she asked.

"Yes!" He drew one from his pocket and slapped it on the table. "You've implicated me in the crime. Like it or not, I'm totally involved in this, and I won't stop until I find who did it!"

"You don't understand," Yuri said. "I didn't plant your business card on Abigail's body. I haven't been anywhere near her. Not for a long time ... but particularly not last night. Mr. Barnum, give me the bag."

"What?"

This time, she didn't seem angry. "Just give it to me. Please. You don't understand what you're dealing with. That bag ... your business card ... you've already been fully involved in this. Let me help you get out of it. Abigail was killed for her involvement in this mess. Do you want to end up the same? Under a white sheet on some unknown sidewalk? I've let my only relative die for this idiocy. Don't make me let an innocent die because of it."

The scary thing for Julius was, he was pretty sure Yuri was being genuine. She really did think he was in danger because of a pocketbook. But that was crazy ... right? It wasn't like someone would die for a woman's purse. Unless they weren't dying for the bag itself, but what was inside of it ... Moving almost against his will, Julius reached into the bag and his fingers touched something cool and metallic. "What—"

"No!" Yuri shouted. His head jerked up as the young woman shot to her feet, knocking the stool over from beneath her. Before he could react, she'd snatched up the napkin holder and slammed it into his head.