After Charles hung up the phone, he was about to drive to the coffee shop. He got in the car when he remembered that his driver's license had been revoked. He frowned and summoned his driver at home.
"Mr. Harris, this is already the maximum speed I can go. Iâll have to retake my driving test if I go any faster than this!" It was only ten minutes since he pulled out onto the road, yet he had already been rushed so many times that he lost count.
Charles frowned imperceptibly, then raised his wrist to look at his watch. His thin lips were pressed tightly.
15 minutes later, the car arrived at the coffee shopâs entrance.
Charles got out of the car and walked toward the coffee shop, walking much faster than usual. The driver followed behind him.
"Wait in the car," Charles stopped and said to the driver.
The driver responded and returned to the car. He was slightly puzzled. In the past, he was always allowed to follow him regardless of the type of meeting his young master was attending. Why did he stop him today? Was he going to have some kind of a meeting that involved shady affairs?
Charles entered the cafe. Under the blazing gaze of the waitress, he made a beeline for the middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap sitting in the corner.
"Whereâs the stuff?" Charles asked after he approached the man.
Collin pointed at the seat in front of him. "Don't be so anxious, Mr. Harris. Letâs sit down and talk. Itâs a little complicated."
Charles pursed his lips and sat down behind him.
"You care a lot about this car accident huh, Mr. Harris?" Collin smiled and passed him a folder.
Charles took the folder. Just as he was about to open it, the waitress walked over and asked him with a grin, "Sir, what would you like to drink?"
"A cappuccino, extra sugar!" Collin said.
The waitress then asked Charles, "What would you like to drink, Sir?"
"A cup of latte." Charles did not open up the folder. He added. "Hurry up, please. Thank you."
The waitress soon walked over with a cup of cappuccino and latte. She placed them on the table but did not leave after.
There was already a tinge of impatience staining the areas between Charles' eyebrows. He had always been good at masking his emotions, yet that was no longer the case now that he was facing this folder that carried the clues to the car accident. âAnything else?â
"Sir, can you..." The waitressâ face was blossoming. She plucked up the courage and asked, "Can you give me your WeChat ID?"
Charles did not even hesitate. "No."
The waitress wanted to say something else but Charles was one step ahead of her. "We still have important things to talk about, thanks."
"... Okay then." The waitress left reluctantly.
Collin smacked his lips. Though this waitress was pretty, she was terrible at assessing the situation!
Charles pushed the latte aside, finally opening up the folder and taking out the contents.
"Why did you order a drink if youâre not going to drink it, Mr. Harris?" Collin took a sip of his cappuccino and squinted blissfully.
"Someone will keep coming up if I donât. It will interrupt our conversation." Charles flipped through the sheets of papers and some other things in the folder. His expression turned more and more awful by the minute. "What's going on?"
Collin put down the cappuccino. The smile on his face vanished completely, turning into annoyance and unwillingness instead. "I have met my match this time!"
He sighed and said, "I will first tell you about my speculation. I suspect that the red sports car Ms. White drove two years ago wasnât hers."
"It's hers." Charles frowned imperceptibly. He undid a button and said, "The car model and license plate as well as the scratch on the left door are a match to hers."
Sophia had scraped her car two days before her birthday. The paint needed to be imported from abroad, hence the scratches on her car were still not dealt with the day the accident happened.
Collin picked up his cappuccino and took a sip. âDon't be anxious, Mr. Harris. Listen to me."
"Okay." Charles placed his right hand on the table, tapping it from time to time.
Collin wiped the corners of his mouth with his hand and placed his arms on the table, leaning forward slightly. "I found traces of alterations on the license plate, but no valuable fingerprints on it. I first hypothesized that this sports car wasnât Ms. Whiteâs and that someone had replaced her sports car with an identical one. Then, they transferred her license plate to the sports car that we all see after that.
"I investigated based on this hypothesis and checked many surveillance cameras but couldnât find evidence of anyone swapping cars with Ms. White.
Later, however, I discovered that when Ms. White was doing her nails on 24th September, she parked her car in a blind spot where the camera couldnât pick up. Also on that day, a weirdly-dressed man appeared near the nail salon and even stalked Ms. White for quite some time.
"I found this man later. Unfortunately, he was already in an advanced stage of lung cancer two years ago. He had just passed away not long ago when I found him." When he got to this point, Collin sighed heavily, looking as though it was a huge pity.
"Could there be such a coincidence?" Charles was tapping the table slightly quicker now, frowning imperceptibly. "No one did anything to him?"
Collin shook his head. His words could not conceal his disappointment. "No, the doctor said that he could last up until last year at most. It was already a miracle that he could last up until lately when I went to see him.
"Heâs alone, so itâs hard for me to get information about him. I did ask a friend of mine whoâs working in the bank for some help. I found that he received a 500,000 yuan transfer two years ago. This bit of money may not sound much to you, but itâs an astronomical figure for an ordinary person like him."
Charles never knew that there would come a time when he would find it hard to maintain his composure. He picked up the latte and took a sip. He was not in the mood to listen to Collin's investigation process. Hitting the nail on the head, he asked, "If Sophia's car was swapped, then will that prove her innocence?"
"No." Collin was slightly speechless. "Let me be honest with you. If Ms. Jones is really the culprit behind this, then she must have planned this a long time ago.
"The brakes were naturally worn out. Maybe not naturally worn out per se. The brakes were so terribly worn out that I suspect someone had been driving the car in a way that required them to deliberately step on the brakes that way.
"Even if I can prove that the car was swapped, I canât prove that someone was trying to target Ms. White by damaging the brakes. After all, the brakes were worn out naturally.
"Actually, none of this helps!" Collinâs head was aching. He patted his head and said, "After all thatâs said and done, the recording is still the most thorny thing of all.
"There was a problem with the brakes. If I can prove that the recording is fake, then I can say that the car accident was indeed an accident. But if I can't prove that the recording is fake, then the car accident would be an intentional homicide, and the brakes malfunctioning would just be an accident.â
Collin took a few sips of cappuccino and muttered, "This is almost turning into a tongue twister!"
Atrophy of Love: Mr. Harris, Stop Fooling Around!
ï¤Chapter 135 Clues To The Car Accident Two Years Ago Silence.
Charles' eyes were fixed on him like a nail. His dark eyes gradually condensed into ice. "Are you talking so much just to cover up the fact that you havenât found any useful clues?"
"Ha!" Collin picked up the cappuccino and drank a few more sips, grinning sheepishly. "You can't say that. Just the fact that the car was swapped took me almost a year to figure out. Locating that man took me another half a year. Thatâs almost two years."