Страница 13 из 25
"Hey!" the man with Edden exclaimed. "What do you think you're doing?" His face red, he glanced at Edden, clearly ticked off because he wanted to kick me out but couldn't.
Faces turned, and embarrassed, I backed up. "Sorry."
Ivy glanced up from the laptop in the sudden quiet. Both she and the photographer wore questioning expressions as they stared at me, looking like yin and yang with Ivy's short black hair and the photographer's long blond tresses. I remembered seeing the photographer at Trent's stables, taking pictures, but Ivy hadn't been there, and I wondered how she had gotten chummy enough in fifteen minutes to have their heads together discussing the niceties of angles and shadows.
Almost smiling, Edden harrumphed. Head bowed and stubby-fingered hand in the air to say he was taking care of it, he rocked into motion. Ivy gave the photographer one of our cards, then crossed the room to join me. Jenks landed on her shoulder halfway there, and I saw her lips move in a soft comment that made the pixy laugh.
By the time they all reached me, I had cocked my hip and crossed my arms over my chest. "I'm not going to touch anything else!" I exclaimed, wondering if the harsh expressions on the FIB officers' faces were for me breaking protocol or a lingering doubt about my involvement in Kisten's death. I knew Edden had done his best to squelch it, but that meant little to a lifetime of prejudice.
Rolling his eyes at Ivy, Edden took my elbow to lead me into the hallway. Ivy, too, was smiling, but as soon as the privacy of the hall took us, she became serious. "Rachel's here now, so how about showing us where Gle
"That's it," Edden said, glancing past me and into the living room. "Everything else looks untouched."
I jerked my elbow from Edden and leaned against the wall. Jenks's wings clattered as he flew to snuggle in my scarf, and Ivy shook her head. "There isn't enough emotion in the room for someone having been mauled," she said. "You say it happened this morning? No way."
Edden's face scrunched up, and I looked at Ivy. A vampire could read the pheromones left in a room, giving a qualitative, though not terribly quantitative, impression of the emotions that had been given free rein. By the way Edden looked, I guessed he knew about the ability but didn't trust it. Neither did the courts, disallowing a vampire's testimony unless they were trained, registered, and attended quarterly calibration seminars. Ivy didn't, but if she said there wasn't a sign of a struggle here, then I'd believe her over a blood-splattered wall.
"The rest of the house is undisturbed," he said, and Ivy frowned. "Do you want me to tell you what we do know while we tour the house for signs of…emotion?" he finished, and I smirked. Wait until they heard what I found out. But Ivy shot me a look to shut up, and my breath slipped from me. Okay…I'll wait.
"I'm listening," she said to Edden as she went down the short hall. Her stride was long and confident, and the man toting the FIB evidence vacuum pressed into the wall to let her pass. She went first into a tidy, opulent bedroom with pillows, rich drapes, rugs, and beautiful things arranged on what looked like an antique carved bedroom set. Drawers were open and the closet clearly had hangers missing. The rich femininity didn't match the rest of the house. Not at all. Well, except for the snow globe, stockings, and mistletoe display.
"The mortgage is in Mr. and Mrs. Tilson's names," Edden said, his hands in his pockets as he rocked back on his heels, clearly not interested in the incongruity of decorating styles. "They're human," he added, and I almost blurted, No they aren't, biting my tongue instead.
"He and his wife bought the house about a year and a half ago," Edden continued, and Jenks snorted, silent to all but me. "She's a stay-at-home mom caring for their daughter, but we've found that Holly is registered at three day cares. Mr. Tilson works as a janitor, retired from being a science teacher in Kentucky. Took early retirement, I guess, and wanted something to do and to supplement his pension."
Like clean crap from the walls of the boys' bathroom? Yeah, that sounded right.
"We have a tap on the phone and we're watching the credit cards," Edden was saying as Ivy skulked around the room. "There's no extended family that we know of yet on either side, but everyone is out for the holidays and it's taking a long time to get anything."
His words broke off suddenly, and he stared at me. "Why are you smiling?"
Immediately I forced my expression to go i
"Very little." He eyed me. "We'll find them."
Ivy eased around the carved furniture like a shadow, using a pen to shift the curtains and nodding at the security-system sticker on the window. Her sleek leather made her look like a well-paid assassin against the elegant surroundings hidden inside the depths of the house. Someone had excellent tastes and I didn't think it was Mr. Tilson the janitor. Mr. Tilson the hit man, maybe.
"Here's a recent picture," Edden said, handing me a piece of paper with a copy of Tilson's school ID. Jenks startled me when he vaulted from the folds of soft yarn to hover over the nine-by-eleven paper. The face not smiling back at me was blurry, but according to the tag he was blond and blue eyed. There were some wrinkles, but not a lot, and he had a receding hairline.
"Pretty harmless looking for someone who can beat up an FIB detective," Jenks said.
"It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for," I murmured, silently asking Jenks if he was done before handing the paper back to Edden. Ivy hadn't come over to look, so she'd probably seen it already.
"We don't have anything yet on Mrs. Tilson," Edden said, starting when Ivy jerked into a fast pace and left the room. "But we're working on it."
His last words were rather distant, and I could guess why. Ivy was edging into the eerie vamp quickness she took pains to hide from me. Her u
Edden followed me into the hallway. It wasn't hard to figure out where Ivy had gone. Jenks had already flown past the open door to the bathroom, and there was a frightened, older FIB officer leaning against a wall at the end of the hall.
"She in there?" Edden asked the man, who clearly had not been expecting an intense vampire in leather to burst in on him. Edden gave the sweating man a pat on the shoulder. "Will you find out if the fingerprints have been sent off yet?"
The officer walked away gratefully, and Edden and I entered what was clearly the baby's room.
If Ivy looked out of place in the bedroom, she looked like she was from Mars next to the crib, frilly lace curtains, and brightly colored expensive toys. The child had been lavished with attention, from the looks of it. And where Ivy stuck out, Jenks fit right in, hovering with his hands on his hips and staring in disgust at a framed shot of Tinker Bell.
"We're gathering information for a trial more than searching for a way to find them," Edden said to keep the conversation going and cover the pain in the back of his eyes. "I'm not letting a lawyer uphold the Constitution so far that we have to let them go."
I jumped when one of the toys burst into music. Jenks just about hit the ceiling in a cloud of dust, clearly the guilty party.
"You can't pack up a baby and go that fast without leaving a trail," I said, adrenaline flooding me. "I heard the woman dotes on her kid." I gazed at the mounds of toys. "All you'll have to do is post a man at the toy store. You'll have them in a week."
"I want them now," Edden said grimly. The music cut off, and seeing Jenks hovering miserably in the middle of the room, Edden added, "Don't worry, Jenks. We were done here."