Blood Lily (Lilith Adams Vampire Series Book 1) (13 page)

Seconds later an old woman’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Hello?”

Chance held down the button and smiled at Lilith. “Hello, Ma’am. My name is David and I’m with Miriah’s cousin. We came by to surprise her and Malachi, but they don’t seem to be answering. Could you be a dear and buzz us in? They gave us a key to the apartment, but I guess they forgot to give us one to the outside door.”

“Oh but of course! How lovely of you. I’ll buzz you right in.” Even through the crackling speaker she sounded about 90 years old. Chance turned and flashed a brilliant grin, tipping his invisible hat. The buzz sounded and he swung the door open for her.

“Why thank you,
David.
” With a soft laugh, Lilith breezed through the door and started up the stairs. When they reached the third floor landing, an old woman stepped out of her apartment. She didn’t only sound 90, she looked it as well. Her white housecoat was covered in a print of tiny little blue roses that matched the blue slippers on her feet. Even her thinning hair looked more light blue than white. The heavy wrinkles on her face were mostly around the corner of her eyes and her mouth. She’d smiled a lot in her long life.

Chance stepped forward and smiled warmly at her. “I’m David, so nice to meet such a helpful neighbor.”

“My pleasure, dear.” She patted his cheek with a gnarled hand and then glanced over at Lilith.

Chance didn’t miss a beat. “Forgive my manners.” He stepped back and pulled Lilith over to him. “This is my fiancée, Lily
, Miriah’s cousin.”

The old woman brightened and turned her smile on Lilith. “What a beautiful name.” Her old eyes drifted back to Chance. “My name is Ida and I’ve been
Miriah and Malachi’s neighbor for quite some time. You certainly seem like good kids. I’m glad they have some good family.”

The emphasis on the last statement made Lilith stop. “How do you mean?”

The old woman looked up, surprised. “Oh I’m just an old fashioned woman. I just don’t think it’s right for a brother to fight so much with his sister.”

“You mean Spencer and Miriah?”

The woman nodded slowly. “It’s just sibling squabbles but they should keep it out of the hall I say.” This time when she nodded it was more of an exclamation point. “Family business should stay in the family. Ah but listen to me, going on and on. I’m sure you two are tired. If you need anything else, please don’t hesitate.” With that well-worn smile stretching the wrinkles in her face, she turned and shuffled back into her apartment.

             
When they were safely in the Sanders apartment, Lilith leaned back against the door and chuckled. “Okay, that was bizarre. David?”

             
Chance looked back at her for a moment. “It’s my middle name, technically not lying.” He started carefully looking over the apartment, making sure it was secure.

             
“And fiancée?”

             
He stopped again and looked at her, this time with a bit of a grin. “Well why else would a girl bring a guy over to her cousin’s place? Plus, I could tell Ida was older. I figured we should play the proper role just to be safe.” He disappeared into the living room before she could respond.

             
The hall way she stood in was covered in various black and white pictures of different countries, all in simple black wood frames. As she walked past them, she recognized a few from Japan, Germany, and Italy. The others were too abstract to figure out the country. At the end of the hall, it opened into a living room to the left and a dining room leading to the kitchen to the right.

             
It was a pretty spacious place, more than she would have thought just from looking at the building from the outside. Miriah apparently hated bare walls. Frames covered them at every turn. Some were filled with photos of her and Malachi, wedding pictures, vacation pictures, and random candid shots of the two of them. It was eerie looking at all these happy pictures, knowing that Malachi was currently on a slab in New York City and Miriah was missing. No matter what happened now, they would never take another smiling picture together.

             
The rest of the frames held a few paintings and artifacts, especially in the living room, where the theme apparently was Japan. The furniture was low and very simplistic. A stark contrast to the oriental doll dresses, rubbings and bamboo paintings framed all over the walls. A curio of little Japanese dolls sat proudly on the mantle above a slate rock fire place, which was fake of course. What little bit of the walls you could see was a warm spring green. Miriah had never really talked about Japan when they were younger. This had to be Malachi’s influence on decorating. And now he was never going to see it again. She shook off that thought and passed between the dining room and living room to a hall that presumably led to the bedroom.

             
The first room off the hall was the master bedroom. It was an artful blend of dark chocolate brown and a delicate blue. Sophisticated, but not overtly masculine or feminine. Lilith pulled open the drawer in an espresso colored nightstand. It was a mottled mixture of pills, little hotel shampoos, razors and other personal items. She frowned down at the odd contents. It looked like they’d just been randomly dumped in the drawer. Of course it wasn’t her place to judge the organizational skills of others.

             
The drawer in the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed held a number of items she wished she hadn’t seen. No one needs to know that much about their families’ private lives. Apparently, Miriah believed pretty strongly in the electronic age. The matching chest of drawers didn’t hold anything interesting, just clothes and winter sweaters. There was a walk in closet in the left corner of the room. She flipped the light switch as she opened the door. The closet was immaculate. No clothes on the ground, no collection of junk on the top shelf, no boxes littering the corners.

             
There was a small suitcase to the left of the door, and a nice collection of shoes along the right wall, but other than that the floor was completely clear. She glanced along the twin rows of hanging clothes and noticed a few that were crumpled with deep wrinkles. Everything else looked perfect, like they were freshly ironed. Something nagged at her, it just didn’t make sense suddenly. The closet was beyond clean. It was obsessively clean. Odd. She just kept staring at the crumpled clothes.

             
“Chance?” She called out as she moved out of the closet and crossed through the bedroom to the hall. The next door was a clean and spacious bathroom, but nothing really stood out. She moved on to the last room and found Chance standing over an office desk, moving through papers. “You find anything interesting?”

             
“Just a bunch of accounting paperwork. It looks like Miriah’s been dealing with all the family finances, plus her normal accounting work.”

             
Lilith moved around the desk to stand next to him. She grabbed a few pages and looked over the Excel spreadsheets. She whistled as her eyes scanned the page. “Wow. A whole lot of accounts to keep track of. Looks like everything from real estate to medical research.”

“What about you? Find anything in the other rooms?” Chance moved on to a bookcase filled with a random collection of books and knick knacks.

“Not really.” The clothes were still nagging at her. “Except… It’s probably nothing, but there are a few outfits hanging in their insanely clean and organized closet that are wrinkled all to hell. It just seems…out of place.”

Chance was about to say something when his cell phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket and shrugged at the number. “Spencer.” He answered it
as he walked toward the door. “How are you feeling, man?”

Lilith took a seat at the desk and started going through the drawers while she listened to Chance’s side of the conversation.

“Good, I’m glad you’re feeling better… Nah, we are up at Miriah’s place taking a look around… It’s okay, Spence, we didn’t want to wake you…By the way, I don’t think Miriah’s neighbor likes you too much.” He laughed whole heartedly at some witty response from Spencer. It relieved her. Spencer sounded pretty stable and hopefully he’d stay that way. “Well, sure. Of course. Okay. See you then.”

He turned to Lilith after he hung up with a
half-smile. “Well, he sounds better, really hates the “old bat” that lives across from Miriah, and he’s going to meet us here in about an hour. I figured we should probably tell him about Malachi in person.”

“Good. Maybe he can actually shed some light on all this. If Miriah was keeping anything here for Duncan, maybe he knows about it or where to look. All I can tell so far is that
Malachi loves all things Japanese, they are meticulous about cleaning but not about what they dump in nightstand drawers, and Miriah must stockpile batteries somewhere.”

Chance glanced up at that last bit. “Do I even want to know?”

Lilith flashed a quick, awkward smile. “Uh, probably not.”

There were several moments of silence while they both continued the search until Chance changed the subject.
“You know what I don’t get? Why do you think it only mentioned Miriah in the letter, and not Spencer?” Chance was leafing through a book on some ancient text, with glossy pictures of every page of the manuscript.

“Miriah has always been the more responsible one.
Accountant versus art appraiser. It looks like most of the duties he passed on to Miriah were based on her mathematical skills. I suppose there wouldn’t really be much for an art appraiser to do.”

“Hmmm makes sense I suppose.” He didn’t sound one hundred percent convinced, but he didn’t say anything else as he thumbed through the book he was holding.

“What book is that anyway?” Lilith peered at the photos while she closed the overly organized drawer of office supplies and reached for the next one.

“It’s a pictori
al of this famous book, known as the Voyruich Manuscript, one of the oldest ones in known history and it’s a total enigma. I saw it at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library a few years back. It’s been dated to the 1400’s. Pretty fascinating piece.”

Lilith arched an eyebrow and looked at him like she’d never seen him before. He looked up just in time to catch her expression.  Chance scowled over at her and flipped his middle finger in her direction before returning to the book.

“Just because I’m a bodyguard doesn’t mean I’m mindless, thank you very much. I happen to have a great appreciation for history.” When she still didn’t say anything, he continued. “Plus Gregor took a tour of the Yale Museum a few years ago. He seemed pretty interested in the manuscript.”

Lilith chuckled as she shuffled through some more papers in a file drawer. “Ah. The truth finally comes out.
Interest by proximity.”

Forty-five minutes later they still hadn’t found anything. All the papers Miriah kept here were personal finances and a few of Duncan’s finances. If she was conducting an audit on Miriah, Malachi or Duncan it would be a goldmine, but otherwise it was all useless. Chance found several books on the Voyruich Manuscript which kept him entertained but didn’t yield anything useful.

“You guys still here?” Spencer’s voice came from the front hall and thankfully he sounded pretty normal.

“Yeah, back here in the office, Spence.” Chance shelved the book he’d been thumbing through and gracefully hopped up off the floor.

Spencer peeked into the room and glanced up at Chance who towered over him.
Spencer was at least nine inches shorter than Chance’s six foot three. The sleep had done him some good. He still looked vaguely homeless, and his clothes were rumpled even more now, but his eyes were sharp and no longer red rimmed.

“You guys find anything here?” He looked at both of them anxiously.

“Not really. It doesn’t look like Miriah kept anything significant here.” Lilith shoved the last of the papers back in the file drawer and closed it.

“What about at Dad’s? You didn’t find anything there at all?”

“Not really.” She busied herself with cleaning up Miriah’s desk so she wouldn’t give anything away. She still didn’t want anyone to know about the tin. “Just a couple journal entries, a little blood trail leading to the door. No other fingerprints or any other forensic evidence.”

Spencer’s jaw clenched and he forced a rough sigh.
“Just a bunch of dead ends.”

“Why don’t we go out to the dining room and
talk? I’d really like to hear about things from you, Spencer. Even something insignificant could be important. Plus, we have some stuff to tell you anyway.” She busied herself with placing items on the desk in their proper places, and didn’t look up after the last sentence. She wasn’t looking forward to telling Spencer about Malachi.

“Sure.” His voice sounded sort of shaky and uncertain and Lilith could definitely understand that.

Lilith and Chance took one side of the table and Spencer sat across the table from them. Somehow that just seemed safer to her. Spencer was staring around the room at all the pictures of Miriah and Malachi. He stopped at a picture of the four of them, Spencer, Duncan, Miriah and Malachi. His mouth set in an angry line and there were darker things lingering below the surface. If it was her in his situation, she’d be pretty damn angry too.