Lacey Lee In Lockdown

Last year I serialised 12 detective stories on my Patreon starring Lacey Lee Detective Extraordinaire. Lockdown came in after I had posted three and was writing the last few episodes and I made the executive decision to shift the stories from real-time to the previous year. Still, that did leave the question - what use is a private detective in lockdown. Hence this bonus story for patrons. Hopefully this is now an historical curiosity.

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Lacey Lee In Lockdown

Is Private Investigator an essential business? How much can be done from home?

Background checks, of course. Calling people and asking them questions, keeping a tab on their online activity.

This can easily tip over into illegal activity. If you follow someone discreetly down the street no one gets very excited. Follow them across the internet and it’s a national scandal.

Some online shops and advertisers are very sloppy about their security and you can tell a lot about what someone’s been looking at by what they’re trying to sell them.

It’s still hacking when you can just call up the database with a default admin password, just as it’s still trespass when they leave the gate open.

The phone rings and Lacey answers it. “I think my partner’s having an affair!”

Lacey doesn’t do cheating spouse cases. “Tell them to stop, they’re supposed to be in lockdown.” The cashflow situation is dire, and she can’t get out to help clients; maybe when things open up again she’ll take the case.

Or not. There are plenty of quarantine scams – people claiming to offer government loans and grants if you’ll hand over your bank details, mask and glove sellers who never deliver, and her favourite, the deep-clean team, four big lads in masks and boiler suits who will take your valuables away to disinfect them for you. She’s making good progress on them, despite being stuck inside.

Yet nothing gets resolved, so many investigations caught where she needs to go and see one thing for herself to complete it.

In the end, there is no solution to the case of the global pandemic.