Page 25 of Immortal Unveiled

Crap!

How had she found out? He’d covered his tracks expertly. Nobody apart from the two hybrids knew that he’d been the one planting the fake bracelet on the dead guy. It was impossible that she knew.

“A fake?” Manus echoed. “How would you—”

“I found the real one while I was cleaning out the house.” She motioned him to follow her into the living room and pointed to a cupboard along the wall. “It had slipped underneath it. Maybe she lost it during the struggle. Or maybe she lost it even earlier. I don’t know. But I’m telling you that the bracelet the police showed me wasn’t my mother’s.”

Shit! After all the work he’d done on this case, the problem was still not taken care of. “So, the one the police have didn’t look like your mother’s after all?” he hedged.

“No, no, it did. It was an exact replica.”

She walked to a sideboard and picked something up, then turned back to him and showed it to him. Manus recognized it immediately: the bracelet. “I was fooled, Manus. Completely fooled. The police lied to me. They planted an identical bracelet on that dead guy to make me believe that he killed my mother.”

She was right about one thing: the bracelet had been planted, just not by the police. “Are you sure it’s not just some mistake?”

“Mistake?” She tossed him a skeptical look.

“Yes. Maybe the guy had an identical bracelet to your mother’s, and the police thought it was the same. Doesn’t mean they planted it on him.”

Kim shook her head. “It’s a custom piece, a one-of-a-kind. They went through a whole lot of trouble to make me believe that my mother’s murder is solved. And that tells me that there’s something else behind it. I have my suspicions. I think my ex-fiancé is behind this.”

“Your ex? Are you saying you believe he killed your mother?”

“No, of course not. But we broke up after Mom’s death. He didn’t believe my supernatural theory, and as a result, we fought all the time. I think he thought if my mother’s murder was finally solved, we would get back together.”

Clearly, Kim had quite an imagination. But he didn’t like to send her down a path that only made things worse and more confusing. “But how would he even have done it?”

“He works at the district attorney’s office. He’s got lots of connections in the police force. It wouldn’t have been too hard for him to stage this.”

“Hmm.”

For a moment, Manus wondered whether he could use Kim’s new theory to his advantage, but he knew it wouldn’t help for long. Even if he could finagle it so it looked like her fiancé had been the one planting the bracelet to close the case, it meant the case was in fact still open, and justice hadn’t been served. Kim would continue to pursue her own investigations and probably return to her supernatural theory. They would be back at square one.

No, he couldn’t let her do this. He had to be the one directing where she kept digging for information. And the only way he could do that was if he pretended to help her.

“So, you want me to help you figure out what’s really going on?” Manus asked.

Kim nodded, a ray of hope illuminating her face now. “Yes. I need your help. I can’t go to the police. They are obviously corrupt, and Todd has his own agenda. My mother’s murderer is still out there.”

“I understand.”

Unexpectedly, she clutched his arm. “Oh my God, I was just thinking: what if the air conditioning expert and the meteorologist you talked to about the vortex were corrupt too? What if they were in bed with the police and made up that story so that you wouldn’t investigate any further in that case you told me about?”

Ah shit! He had his work cut out for himself. “I don’t know, Kim. They were pretty credible people. Besides, the murderer in that case was found. I’m inclined to believe the explanation of how that vortex came to be.”

Kim slowly shook her head. “I think we were both fooled. Please keep an open mind. There is more to this than we both think. Something about my mother’s murder is off. I mean, she had no enemies, and nothing was stolen. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Manus remembered something from the police report. “You’re sure nothing was stolen? But was anything disturbed?” He waited for the answer he already knew.

“Well, disturbed, yes. A few drawers were open and had been rifled through, but nothing was missing.”

“Nothing that you know of,” Manus qualified, suddenly having a thought.

After all, why would a demon come to an emissarius’s house, rifle through her stuff, and then kill her when he was disturbed? What if he’d been looking for something? Had he found what he’d been looking for?

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if somebody was looking for something in your mother’s possession? Didn’t she work in a museum and was handling pretty expensive things? Did she ever take anything home?”

Kim immediately shook her head. “Never. It wasn’t safe. Besides, all employees are searched before they leave the museum, so they can’t smuggle anything out.”

But what if she’d managed to do just that? What if Nancy Britton had found something in the museum that was of interest to the demons? It wasn’t an angle the Stealth Guardians had thoroughly investigated yet, partially because they lacked manpower, partially because the chances of Nancy not having brought anything of interest to the Stealth Guardians’ attention immediately were slim. She’d been a dependable informant.